Loving Ghosts
by Walkingdeadfan256
Summary: Beth was gone; Daryl knew that although he hated it. He had to get up today and tomorrow, but today there was a bigger mission; get Eugene from Negan's compound and get back to Hilltop. He expected something to go wrong, but didn't expect to see the girl he spent two years trying to forget; golden curls shining, heavily pregnant, covered in scars and nonetheless with the Saviors.
1. Chapter 1

**I've had this idea for a while, but didn't know where to start. This is going to be a dark fic, with mature content so be advised. I really enjoyed writing it and hope you like it. Let me know either way/ if you have any thoughts or ideas on it. I hope you enjoy and continue to follow this story. Thanks either way!**

 **Warning: Future chapters will contain rape and self harm. Be advised.**

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Chapter 1

Blood emerged from her nose as Rosita's knee made contact with the especially pale skin around her nose and mouth. The color division of the skin just emphasized the crimson color of the blood streaming from the girl's nasal area quick enough to stain Rosita's knee cap. The moment felt unreal to Daryl; his entire world had changed in a matter of seconds just like it had before. His bones tensed, he couldn't feel, hear or comprehend anything about the scene in front of him. Rosita's arms gripped the pale arms of the girl and pushed it in; her shoulder lost its shape instantly.

Everything rushed back to Daryl as the echo rang in his ears from the girl dropping the gun that her shoulder was dislocated to prohibit by Rosita as she yelped in pain simultaneously. His eyes automatically glared at the girl or the ghost in front of him. Her skin was paler than he had ever seen it, which just alluded more to a ghostlike state.

"Screw you." Her voice was weak as her head bobbed down after she yelped from the pain in her arm, but it was _her_ voice. The girl leaned forward to spit a mouthful of blood out onto her grey T-shirt. Daryl dropped his clutch on the shaking Eugene next to him and walked to the girl sitting in dust on the ground.

"What the hell Daryl?" Rosita yelled next to him, running over to grab Eugene.

Daryl ignored her. He ignored everything except the girl in front of him. He didn't comprehend anything about her except the fact that she was there.

Her blonde hair was now dyed red with the dried blood encasing it, but untouched parts still glistened as she turned her face to him. Without the imposing threat of Rosita's gun facing her, she allowed herself to look at the new opposer. Her eyes felt sticky as the world blurred around her and she knew they probably looked smaller than they usually did, but she turned to see him nevertheless.

She glared at him. Her eyes followed the stray hairs around his face as she studied every part of him. She wanted to take the image in, whether it was real or not. She wanted to feel him against her. "Da-Daryl" She tried to speak through the shock, but merely could only stutter. Tears immediately streamed down her pale face. She tried to stand as quickly as physically possible for a girl in her condition, but only made it to a halfway squatting position while using the brick wall to support herself before she was engulfed in muscular arms and felt Daryl's soft shirt material against her swollen face.

Daryl's instincts took over him as he lifted the girl off of her feet and pressed her into him. He could feel her crying against him, but didn't stop to look at her face. He didn't know how or why, but he could feel her heart beating, her short breaths against him, the tears dripping from her eyes. He could feel her in her entirety. She felt real. The word swarmed around his head in impossibility. The name that had haunted him everyday for two years. The girl who had laid dead in his arms. The one person he had spent two years trying to move on from was now in his arms. _Beth._

He didn't want to ever let go of her. For two years he had thought of what he would've done if Beth had lived and now she was in his arms, crying against his shoulder. He still didn't know what to do, but only knew he wasn't letting her leave him ever again.

The girl had imagined the moment since the gun went off at Grady. She would close her eyes and pretend Daryl would come to her rescue. That he would hold her and swoop her off her feet. He'd bring her far from whatever hell she was in and she'd be the Beth she was before she got left behind. Sometimes he'd bring her to Maggie and the others, but other times it would just be her and him. Sometimes he would kiss her or sometimes he would just want her to be safe with him. In her imagination she could be with him. For two years she only had her imagination.

"Daryl" Rosita called. "We gotta go." She stared at Daryl with the girl in his arms.

Daryl forced himself to let her go knowing Rosita was right, but she only leaned against him with her bare feet on the ground again. He looked at Rosita, who just raised her eyebrows at him in frustration. He grunted in response as he felt Beth leaning on him for support, but did not have time to wonder why. He looked down at the pebbles sticking into her swollen feet, but she didn't seem to notice. He didn't want to see what he knew he felt against him as he refused to look at her middle area.

He thought for a split second looking between Eugene and Beth before grabbing the girl in his arms. Daryl had lifted her before on a few occasions and figured he could run with the weight she once was, but didn't expect an increasement. He led the way as he felt the pressing weight of the girl in his arms. Beth felt the world spinning around her as they made their way through abandoned streets. She watched the woman, who had injured her arm in some way she still didn't know, kill two walkers on the way viciously. It was hard to run with the girl, but Daryl forced his body to keep going down the streets until they made it a few blocks away.

Rosita stopped next to him with her gun still facing Eugene behind a concrete building that Daryl thought would give them cover. He helped Beth on her feet again as she pushed her back into the concrete wall behind them. Rosita glanced around, carefully making sure that they had not been followed.

Daryl's hand grazed Beth's face and wiped the tears off her check. She smiled at him as she noticed his eyes studying her. "How?" He mumbled to himself rather than her.

"One, two, three…" Beth mouthed the words without sound while Daryl took her sight in, wondering if she was real. Rosita stood with an arm on Eugene as she watched Daryl interact with the strange fugitive they had just captured.

Daryl wanted to look away instantly, but fought not to when his eyes found her extremely protruding stomach. The grey T-shirt she had on didn't cover half of the swollen stomach that stretched in front of her, leaving the better half of her belly exposed. Her eyes met his as he looked down at her face, covered with beads of sweat. She shrugged and smiled sadly, knowing his discovery. He hardly had time to think about it in the moment though, nor ask any of the million questions that she knew would eventually be asked of her.

"Six, seven…" Daryl noticed her mouthing to herself.

"What ya doin'?" He finally spoke to the girl in words of unimportance for lack of thinking about what he actually wanted to say to her.

There were still tears in her eyes as she responded. "Dr. Carson said if I count to ten the hallucination will be over."

"'s real Beth, I'm real." He let his hand drop as she lifted her eyes to his again. _Is it real?_ He wondered if he had just lied. He was staring at a ghost in his mind, but did not want to do anything to have it disappear again, real or not. _How is she here?_ Daryl moved his calloused hand to her cheek again, wanting to feel real skin to prove he was not imaginating something. He felt the soft skin, moistened with sweat in the sweltering heat and studied her face, ignoring the scar his hand covered.

She opened her mouth to something, but then he watched her face contract in pain. She moaned and bent down to her stomach. She grabbed it tightly with her undamaged arm while the other laid painfully by her side.

"Beth!" Daryl called in fear as he swiftly let his hand drop to his side, thinking he could have caused her sudden crippling pain.

Rosita looked up to Daryl again in confusion. She figured he had probably once known the pregnant woman moaning in front of them, but anger built up inside of her as they put the mission at risk. She watched the pregnant woman's knees crumble as she fell to the ground with Daryl's hands on her back, guiding her down.

"The hell's wrong with 'er?" Daryl stood in between Beth, who was kneeling on the ground after just vomiting, and Eugene, who was still in Rosita's grip. Daryl lifted his gun to Eugene's head and grabbed the scruff of his shirt in his hand. He pushed him back with all his strength prepared to attack the cowering man as he pressed the man's back against the concrete wall.

"Your best bet is to let us go, she is in certain need of some serious medical attention, that can be provided with a condition occurring-" Eugene started as Daryl eased his grip suddenly to walk back over to Beth when she vomited again on the street. Rosita grabbed him again as Daryl carefully placed his hand on the back of Beth's T-shirt in some sort of comfort to the moaning girl. Eugene vomited, causing Rosita to drop his arm in shock as he bolted off.

Daryl looked up just in time to see Eugen disappear behind the side of the building. He looked down at Beth again, who was moaning on her knees, looking like she was about to collapse, before facing towards Rosita with his hand still on the girl's back.

"Go get him, I'll stay with her." Rosita compelled.

Daryl looked down at Beth one final time, scared she would disappear before he returned. He grunted in regretful approval.

"Daryl" Rosita had moved to stand directly behind Beth. "You see him, you shoot him dead."

Daryl just grunted again before running in the direction Eugene had darted off in. Beth started to compose herself again only to see him disappear behind the corner. She sat on her knees and pushed her sweat soaked curls behind her ears. Her hands briefly touched the side of her left ear, instantly feeling its imperfection. She quickly covered it again with her curls. Rosita watched the pregnant girl closely, studying her movements in preparation of some sort of a resistance.

A woman walker with blonde hair appeared across the street from them as its moans filled their ears. Beth watched it slowly approach them, not thinking about a defense mechanism until it was only a few feet away.

"Can I have my gun back?" Beth raised her eyebrows in sarcasm at the woman who had her gun out not particularly facing the pregnant girl, but Beth knew she was the reason it was out.

"No." Rosita scoffed sarcastically before stabbing the walker once it got close enough.

The corpse fell next to Beth's knees. She struggled to get away from it as the ends of its hair touched the jeans covering her knees. The smell of the corpse engulfed her quickly and she lost control of her stomach and vomited beside it.

Beth wiped her face aggressively before turning to the woman next to her again.

"Why not?" She asked still wiping residue off her chin as she struggled to stand up. Beth placed a hand on the wall again in an effort to push herself up before she heard the safety of a gun being clicked off. She looked to reveal Rosita's gun facing her.

Rosita smirked cunningly, making her opinion of the girl in front of her obvious. "Look, I don't know why Daryl wasted his time getting you from there, but what I know is you're a Savior. So I'm not giving you a fucking gun and you're gonna stay on your knees where you belong." Rosita walked to the girl kneeling on the ground and pushed the point of her gun into the side of her head where her left ear would be if it was not covered by curls that stood up by themselves on the wrong side of their natural part. "Now shut up, cause I won't hesitate to pull the trigger and put a bullet through your skull."

"Ok then." Beth rolled her eyes defiantly.

Beth carefully tried to push herself away from the corpse, but did not travel far from it on her knees. Eventually she sat back with her knees in front of her, feeling the rough sidewalk stick into her thighs through her jeans that she felt were suffocating her slowly. She felt her arm shooting with pain, but bit into her lip in an effort to conceal her pain rather than show it to the other woman.

"So you guys tried to capture Eugene?" Beth asked leaning back against the wall again.

"Did you not just hear me tell you to shut it?" Rosita squatted next to her.

"It would kinda make you a bitch though. Shooting a pregnant girl and all." Beth tried to push her, wondering how serious the woman was about her threats.

Rosita grabbed her injured arm and for a split second Beth actually feared she'd kill her as Rosita's hand pushed her shoulder in again. Beth yelled out in pain as Rosita pushed her arm behind the girl's back. Rosita ignored it as she pulled the flannel shirt tied around her waist off of her and tied it around the girl's shoulder to hold it up.

"You're welcome." Rosita snickered.

Beth reached up to her tied bent elbow, realizing what the intimidating woman had done. She nodded up to her, still in pain, but refusing to show it. "It was you who broke it in the first place." Beth looked at her only to see the point of a handgun still facing her.

Rosita smirked at her. "What did you say your name was?"

"I didn't." Beth rubbed the part of her stomach covered by her grey T-shirt, leaving the bare half starting under her belly button for Rosita to see.

"You know you've got some nerve. I've got a gun pointed to your head, you can't even stand up on your own to defend yourself and you're still talking like that." Rosita squatted next to her again.

"You're not gonna shoot me." Beth leaned forward again, pushing her head away from the wall as she felt her world spin and her eyes blurred. She grabbed the ground with her unwrapped arm and tried to compose herself again or rather hide her weakness from the woman with the gun. She tried to look as tough as possible, but leaned over to vomit again.

Rosita knew she was right, even if it angered her. As ruthless as she could be, she could not force herself to shoot a pregnant defenseless woman, Savior scum or not. "You think cause you were stupid enough to get knocked up, you're safe now?"

"No" Beth said through a hoarse cough after wiping sweat from her fevered forehead. "You just would've done it already." She looked up long enough to see the annoyance on the woman's face before hitting her head against the wall again. Beth wondered if what seemed like obvious bluffing to herself was as transparent to the other woman. She couldn't tell, but decided to risk everything with a feeling of immunity. Beth swiftly reached up to knock the handgun out of Rosita's hand. She hit her arm fiercely, but with not as much force as she suspected to and the gun only dropped to Rosita's side. Beth dove forward towards the ground, but Rosita grabbed the gun as Beth's fingers barely grazed it.

Beth didn't have the strength to pick herself off of the ground, so she lied on her elbow for a minute, half panting after her actions. It took her another minute to look up to Rosita again.

"I should kill you." Rosita said still pointing the gun at her face. "I mean you're no better than the rest of your people except you were stupid enough to get pregnant."

"Screw you!" Beth mumbled.

"I don't know why Daryl took you..." Rosita said hurtfully.

Beth tried to gain any strength she could to stand up, as she pushed her arm straight up. She coughed to herself, forcing tears away from her eyes while hoping the woman didn't see them.

Rosita grabbed a handful of blonde curls on her left side and rammed her head against the concrete wall. Her hand pushed past the misplaced curls that were parted purposefully on the wrong side of her head and pushed into her scalp.

"Listen you little bitch, you try anything and I'll-"

"Rosita!" Daryl's voice boomed in the quiet air from behind her. "Get the hell off a 'er"

Beth smiled in relief as she felt the woman she had just identified as Rosita let go off her.

"Is he dead?" Rosita asked as Daryl walked over to Beth.

Beth smiled up at him when Daryl leaned down to her. The shock of seeing him next to her again hardly wore off as he reached his arm around her back to help her stand. She stood leaning on him for a few seconds just staring before he spoke.

"Nah, couldn't find 'im" Daryl grumbled.

Rosita sighed and rubbed her forehead. "Let's get to the truck." She started to take off in a particularly straight direction down the street.

The world around her blurred as Daryl tugged Beth foreword. Beth's head pounded and she could hardly see, but she felt her feet moving automatically with Daryl arms around her.

"I got ya" he mumbled under his breath and let her weight completely lean on him. His arms held her up tightly, his eyes still glued to her in disbelief. She was in his arms somehow, breathing and living. "I got ya" he said again, still not thinking of anything else to say to her, but not intending to let go of her for a long time.

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 **Hope you enjoyed and decide to stick with it. Please let me know what you thought and leave a review. I should post the next chapter sometime in the next week. Thank you!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hi guys! I just wanted to say thanks for all the reviews and support. I replied to most of them, but sorry if I missed yours. I tried answering without giving anything away from the story. This chapter, you'll find out bits and pieces, but no explanations yet. Also if you couldn't tell yet this is completely a Bethyl slow burn. Enjoy and leave a review of what you thought!**

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Chapter 2

Beth could feel the sweat accumulating with Daryl against her. She felt her legs ache with every step of gravel sticking into her bare feet along with her dislocated shoulder wound and occasional crippling stomach pain and wanted nothing more than to crumble to the ground, but Daryl forced her forward. He knew she was in pain, but they did not have a choice as to continue. Rosita had ran ahead, but he had not found Eugene, who could already have a team following them.

Daryl watched the last sliver of her eyes close as they walked. The overwhelming heat of the day was not helping her condition at all he realized watching the beads of sweat drip down the pale pretty face, not even knowing what was really wrong with her. He knew he would not be able to make it far enough carrying her, but guilt filled him as he watched her struggle. They had only made it halfway down the street that Rosita had ran down moments earlier when the familiar blue pickup truck came towards them.

Daryl let out a sigh of gratitude and relief, looking once more at the girl he had been dragging along. Her eyelids pushed open slightly again to meet his eyes.

The blue truck stopped in front of them and Beth looked to Daryl in questioning. He flung open the rusty door and repositioned himself to stand behind Beth. He did not think twice about putting his hands intimately on her waist as he helped her get onto the truck. Her eyes darted towards Rosita once Daryl climbed in immediately after her and slammed the rusty door again.

Rosita rolled her eyes at the girl, feeling their legs touching slightly as the three were crammed into the seats. Beth was half panting from the excessive heat while Rosita watched her wipe sweat off her face.

"Can you explain now what the hell is going on and who the fuck she is?" Rosita said to Daryl and aggressively pressed on the gas pedal.

Beth felt nauseous again, feeling the increasement of speed. She pushed her head back, and it naturally found its way against Daryl's shoulder.

"'S Maggie's sister." Daryl grumbled.

"Wait Maggie's alive!" Beth exclaimed suddenly and swung her head forward in excitement too quickly and instantly felt her vision blur as a new wave of nausea took over her body. She fell back this time against the black leather seats and hoped Daryl or Rosita had not noticed her weakness. Neither seemed too or at least pretended not to notice she thought to herself quickly.

"I thought Maggie's sister died in Atlanta." Rosita said in confusion as they speed down a new abandoned street.

"She's 'ere." Daryl said shortly.

"Wait, but-" Rosita started, but was interrupted.

"Is Maggie alive?" Beth yelled again.

"Yes Maggie's alive, now shut it you little-" Rosita yelled over again.

"Rosita!" Daryl snapped. "We're takin' 'er to Maggie and the others."

"The others? Where are we going Daryl?" Beth swallowed deeply in an effort to stop the vomit she felt forming in the back of her mouth. She placed her hand on her stomach and carefully gripped it as if it was steadying her.

"We're goin' home Beth, yer gonna see Maggie again and Rick, Michonne, Judith…" Daryl grabbed her hand off her stomach, feeling uncomfortable as she made his calloused hand rest against her bulging stomach once more.

Tears dripped down her cheeks again. "They're all alive?" Her voice cracked and she looked up to him in a happy shock.

"They are, Beth. Yer gunna see 'em now." His hand found the back of her head. He felt the sweaty curls dampen his hand and pulled her against his chest again. It took him a few minutes of him holding her silently to find the courage to finally ask her anything.

He did not make an effort to move her from his chest, where she happily took comfort against, when he spoke softly to her. "How?" He mumbled.

"What?" Beth asked, carefully pushing away from his chest with her uninjured arm. She felt everything spin around her as her chest dropped foreword without Daryl's support. She felt Daryl grab her and pull her up again, this time letting her lean against the leather seat.

"How are ya 'ere?" Daryl's hand grazed her face. She shrugged him off her weakly. "Ya were shot. I saw ya die. Daryl dropped his hand willingly, still hardly believing she was there.

Beth wanted to cry. It was too much for the confused girl. She could not answer his questions, there was too much to explain, too much she didn't want to tell him.

Daryl held her in his arms like she was the child he once knew. She allowed him to do so; she even liked it. But answering his questions would ruin it.

Beth opened her mouth to speak, but couldn't find any words. She felt her throat burn, but was powerless to stop the vomit from splurging out of her chapped lips as tears ran down her face. Daryl leaned back slightly as the pungent stench coming from her lips and now soiled T-shirt filled the aroma of the small car.

She vaguely heard Rosita curse at her, but ignored it. _It doesn't matter,_ she told herself with her head still bent down, too ashamed or maybe just weak to meet Daryl's eyes again.

"How are ya 'ere?" He asked again, half to himself rather than the girl.

Beth pushed herself up breathing heavy to look at Daryl's confused face. He would not move his gaze from her as she felt the cramped conditions in between Daryl and Rosita. She rubbed her hand in a circle on the partly bare part of her stomach, feeling the soft skin. Beth was not sure when she had started rubbing her belly, but knew it had calmed her down when she needed to be in the past few months. She felt Daryl's eyes following her hand around her stomach and wondered what he was thinking. He had started asking and she knew it wasn't going to be the only thing he asked.

Beth knew he was not going to be the only one asking questions. She knew her sister would to. Strangely enough to Beth, the thought of seeing Maggie again was not fully exciting. It of course seemed just as unreal as seeing Daryl, but Beth could not deny the terrified feeling in her gut. She knew she should be thinking more, but her head felt hazy. She didn't know exactly what was wrong with her, but knew Dr. Carson had told Negan. Either way it was occupying a portion of her thoughts rather than just thinking of Daryl or Maggie.

Beth could feel Daryl's arm against her tied one. She bit her lip, feeling the wound, but quickly forced herself to pull her focus from it. She could tell Rosita was looking over at her out of the corner of her eyes every couple of minutes. Beth understood Rosita's displeasure of her. She had ruined their mission, puked in her car, and in her opinion her cowlike body was currently pressed against the model like person. She certainly understood, not to mention the fact that Beth had raised her gun with full purpose of killing her if Rosita had not stopped her. However, Beth did not care. In fact she had grown very used to people despising her, she almost expected it.

Before Daryl had showed up, there was probably one person that she knew was alive that even liked her. She had become accustomed to the idea that everyone around her either wanted her dead or wanted to do a lot worse to her, and just like with Rosita, she fully understood why.

"Where are we going Daryl?" Beth ignored his questioning.

She knew she would have to explain eventually, to him, Rick, Maggie, everyone who had once loved her. But now was not the time, no matter how tortured Daryl's or anyone else's thoughts would become as they looked at the pregnant girl somewhere in her very early twenties, seeing only the scars she choose to be visible.

"How are ya 'ere?" Daryl was still dumbfounded.

"I can't, not now, not yet." Beth said quickly before she felt another wave of pain somewhere she could not locate in her presumed stomach.

Daryl watched her face contract in pain again. She groaned and threw her head foreword, as if it was just more painful to hold it up.

"Beth" Daryl shook her uninjured arm that was closest to him. "Beth!" He called again in fear.

Beth clinched her jaw for a few more seconds before the pain subdued. "I'm okay." She mumbled under her breath before turning to Daryl again, who was still looking at her with shock and confusion. "I'm okay." She repeated this time looking at his face.

Her eyes studied the uneven bristles of unshaven hairs on his face. The array of brown and grey colors before her distracted her from his whole being. In her imagination Daryl did not have a single grey hair in his beard, so they just made him feel more unreal to her.

Daryl watched her in confusion as she reached her soft clammy palm and pressed it against his chin. Normally he would not let anyone, maybe not even Carol, touch him so peculiarly, but he was not going to deny Beth anything ever again. Besides, he liked feeling her in anyway, it just reminded him and half confused him that she was really there. He moved his glance from her face to her hand.

His eyes traced her fingers as they rested on his face. He could tell they looked swollen, but he followed them to her wrists. The extra weight even in her arms and shoulders looked so unnatural to him. Everything felt unnatural about her, her look, her feel, just being there in general.

"We're here" Rosita's voice half sang out, interrupting their moment. Beth dropped her hand quickly and rested it on her stomach again, keeping it on her stained in blood and vomit T-shirt. Her eyes fell forward to see where they were and she felt fear take over her body as she began to understand her setting.

"Yer sister's at Hilltop" Daryl said quietly under his breath.

 _No, I can't go in there._ Beth stared at the hovering gates that they were quickly approaching. She used all her strength to fight the urge to vomit again, feeling Daryl's hand on her stomach. She felt the familiar flutter in her stomach of a kick and rubbed it, not knowing if she was trying to sooth the fetus or herself.

The gates taunted her as Rosita abruptly stopped the car sending her foreword a few inches, and making her feeling of nausea worsen. She could feel the bile burning the back of her throat, but tried to hide her sick feeling until she lost her vision. In her own sense of darkness Beth moved her head to find Daryl. She did not plan to push against his chest, but merely just wanted to have him touching her in anyway, feeling lost, alone and overall confused.

She felt Daryl's hand grab the left side of her head as her sight once more started to return along with a semi full consciousness. Rosita looked over at Daryl only to see his hand grab a lock of blonde curls that was seemingly misplaced on the wrong side of the girl's head. Beth snapped her head up ignoring the dizziness she felt to get his hand off her as quickly as possible.

Daryl let her escape his grip, but decided to not question her on anything else yet. After all some indecisiveness was the least pressing question on his mind in the midst of seeing Beth Greene again. Rosita pulled the keys from the engine and they all felt the truck shut down as she swung open the rusty door, feeling the chipped paint stick into her fingers.

Daryl pushed himself out next, leaving Beth alone for a split second as his boots hit the grass to the side of the gate's entrance. Beth looked forward nervously anticipating so much, while she looked mindlessly across an array of cars all parked on the grass to the left and right of the entrance. Lost in a million thoughts that Daryl or anyone else could never really understand, she hardly noticed Daryl with his arms leaned onto the seat, waiting for her to make an effort to move out.

Her jeans felt as if they were stuck to the leather seats, she thought to herself before she turned to see Daryl. Looking in on the girl, who looked increasingly more comfortable than she did when squished between two other adults despite having dried vomit and blood on her shirt, a tied up arm, an extra few dozen pounds to carry around on her and sweltering in an impending heat, Daryl did not feel any guilt yet. He did not have time to think about it nor for his true thoughts to become apparent to him. In the moment, he only felt an overwhelming joy that she was there, without needing to question it, just yet.

"C'mon" he mumbled to her.

She was instantly snapped out of her depressive trance with the sound of his voice. Beth turned her head, feeling the layer of sweat glued to her body when she tried to move. Her jeans made her waist ache with the feeling of an imposing suffocation with the metal button of some designer jeans she did not recognize sticking into her skin, under the swell of her protruding stomach. She ignored it and took her hand off the swell of her stomach to extend her arm out to the driver's seat opposite, where Daryl was waiting to help her.

Beth carefully pushed herself towards him with all her force in her arm, but hardly moved a few inches before Daryl's arms wrapped around her back. He did not want to touch her stomach and she could tell as he pulled her off her feet and onto the ground. She wrapped her arm around her neck, feeling the end of her bump clash against him in slight guilt before her feet absorbed the moist feeling of grass underneath them to tickle the edges.

"You good?" Daryl mumbled to her before slamming the door behind her closed.

Beth felt his hands drop off her to reach the door behind her and she instantly felt more vulnerable. She had not been so fearful in a long time as she was when she turned towards Rosita on the other side of the car, standing with her skinny arm resting on the top of the car, glaring at the two. Beth moved her glance from her to the gates just in time for Daryl to tap her and mumble "C'mon."

Rosita fell in line next to them as Beth automatically wrapped her arm around Daryl's back for support. He helped her walk, or merely hobble along toward the gate. The glare of the blazing sun forced her to keep her head and therefore her gaze down at the dirt road that was staining her feet. She didn't notice the guards standing at the top of the gate, although she should have known where they were from past experiences, until one called down to open the gates.

"It's Daryl and Rosita. They've got..." Beth looked up when he yelled urgently to see an asian man only a few years older than herself. She recognized him instantly, feeling her stomach ache painfully again. His voice stopped or at least was cut off as the rough sound of frickson filled the air with gates being opened.

Beth took a step away from Daryl into the gates, feeling a chill go through her despite the sweltering heat that had caused sweat to encase her body. She wondered briefly among a million other things about what she looked like to the people stepping back into the gates again. She could feel the dried blood around her chin from Rosita's blow, but could not tell how much or how visible it was to the people around her. Her arm was still tied up in Rosita's T-shirt, but she figured that would be the last thing anyone would be looking at.

Daryl caught up with Beth just as she made it the first step inside the gates. Rosita walked a few feet in front of them, but stopped and waited a few seconds for them. Beth allowed Daryl's arm to slip under hers again, feeling dizzy and scared she would fall while on her own. The two took another few steps in, not noticing the town surrounding them, almost every person dropping whatever they were doing.

Beth could feel her own heart racing, like it was beating out of chest. For a split second she wondered if it was visible before quickly brushing the thought aside. Her mind was consumed with fear, exhaustion and anticipation. She did not let her emotions show to the people around her, but let her serious grim expression shield her.

"Get Maggie." Daryl instructed Rosita next to him, who instantly ran off on his command. Daryl ignored the crowd of people enclosing them, but stopped forcing Beth's body forward by time they made it a few feet inside the walls, so they could once again be closed, knowing she was in pain. The gates screeched behind them as Beth finally looked around at the people surrounding her.

Daryl immediately felt her tense as she lifted her head. He watched her eyes move from the different people. They were all staring at them, making him more uncomfortable than he would ever admit. Daryl dropped his arm off Beth as he looked above a crowd of heads to find the grey rough hair he recognized as Carol's. She was pushing through the crowd, not knowing what the commotion was about.

Carol made her way to the front of the surrounding mob of people. Beth turned quickly to see the older woman, closer than anyone else had dared come. Daryl or Beth couldn't make out any specific words with the people around them; there was too much talking or more like yelling at one time. Daryl did not understand why they were all watching him, but his attention was fixed on Beth, anticipating everyone's reactions once they saw her. It would make it more real for him at least, knowing he was not the only person seeing a ghost.

Beth scanned the mob of angry people, suddenly feeling weaker than before. Her eyes focused in on a what seemed like an endless array of eyes glaring at her, knowing each pair wanted her dead or worse. She moved her focus from person to person, that had once been in front of her in complete terror, but now seemed to have a sense of satisfaction enclosing her like a caged animal. It was not until she saw the grey haired woman in some form of body armour covering her middle section and a gun held down towards the ground that Beth's world finally stopped spinning and came to a standstill.

Her ears rang with the sounds of dozens of voices, but she watched the woman mouth the words "Oh my God." Beth stood frozen in place as the woman ran towards her. Daryl watched in silence as Carol ran to them, knowing her mind was swarming with a million questions as his still was. He did not bother saying anything, knowing Carol deserved a quick moment with a member of her family she had lost. Beth took a step back as Carol embraced her, wrapping her arms around the girl's back. She leaned back quickly, hearing another voice come towards them, closer and more recognizable than the rest.

"Beth?" Michonne approached them.

Beth almost forgot about the swarm of people around her and just focused on the people in front of her that she had spent years thinking about. Everything felt surreal as a grin took over her face and happy tears formed in Carol's eyes. Michonne looked completely lost, staring at the girl.

"Yeah" Beth answered through a forming smile.

Rick came next to their bubble of shock. Beth turned to him, instantly seeing the years older he was from the last time she had seen him through his own confusion. He stared at her for a minute without saying a word, but just glaring with an uncomfortable look of intensity.

It was only seconds later that Daryl turned to see the crowd part ways and Maggie sprinting through with as much force as she could possibly have in her. Their inner circle parted as well to let the woman see the girl standing in the center. Maggie froze in place before letting out a sob.

Maggie glared at the girl in front of her with happy sobs of shock. Her eyes moved past her pregnant belly and blood and vomit covered shirt. She ignored the blood covering her face and tied up arm to find the girl's face. Her hair was swayed messily to her side, unbeknown to them that it was parted purposefully. Rick walked to Maggie and grabbed her shoulders, but the shock wore off and she darted towards the girl.

Beth was still standing with a smile on her face, her hand resting peacefully on her stomach. She allowed herself to forget everything for a few quick seconds in which her sister grabbed her as tightly as Beth had ever been held. It took her a moment to lift her uninjured arm and wrap it around Maggie.

Beth could still hear Maggie crying against her as Maggie leaned down to hold her sister. Maggie's hand found the back of Beth's head and caressed it softly, ignoring the feeling of dried residues clinging to blonde curls. Maggie finally pulled away from her to see her face again, still not believing it was real.

"Maggie" Beth said more to herself than her sister.

"I'm here Beth, I'm not going anywhere." Maggie's hands didn't leave her sister's face until they were interrupted.

Seemingly out of nowhere Kal was as close as anyone else in their inner circle. Maggie turned to him once she felt his presence there, taking a quick instinctual step away from her sister and closer to him. Maggie didn't understand what was happening at all until it was over, as every minute passed like a second with her heart racing, trying to consume her sobs and compose herself.

Kal's arm cocked upwards in the split seconds that over a hundred people watched before it impacted the soft sweaty skin of Beth. Beth did not have time to think about what was about happening as the knuckles pressed against her cheek with as much force that his body contained instantly pushing her to the ground. She felt pain in her jaw, but everything else hurt once she fell to the grass. Her head fell down to her elbows, shielding her in anticipation of another blow. She refused to let a tear drop despite her face being hidden from those around her.

Maggie screamed as Daryl and Rick enclosed on the young man. Maggie and Carol both went to the girl on the ground as Daryl smashed the man's nose. He cried out before Daryl hit him again, this time forcing him to the floor like he had done to Beth seconds before. Daryl was ready to attack again when Rick and Morgan pulled him back from Kal, who was crying as he held his bleeding nose on the floor.

"You little piece of shit, hittin' lil 'girls now. I'm goin' fuckin' kill ya, ya sumabitch!" Daryl yelled as he struggled to get free from the two men's grips.

"I think you broke my nose, man." Kal yelled back, sitting up from the ground, now knowing he was protected as Daryl started to calm down.

"I shoulda done a lot worse'n that." Daryl pushed off of Rick, but remained calm as Rick stepped towards Kal. He tried to move towards him again, but Morgan pushed his hand against his chest to move him back. Daryl obliged, turning slightly towards the girl balled up as much as physically possible for her while hiding her face.

"That ain't no little girl man, that's Mrs. fucking Negan!" Kal half mocked sarcastically.

Rick grabbed the collar of his T-shirt and pulled him to his feet, knowing he was scaring the young man senseless. Maggie was kneeling next to her sister crying with Carol next to them. Beth's world was spinning ferociously again and she half forgot what was going on. She tried to lift up, but felt too weak, only to be pulled to a position with her chest up again by Maggie and Carol. She looked around with spotted vision before leaning forward and vomiting onto the grass. She would have fallen forward as her body lurched if it was not for Maggie and Carol holding her up.

"If you _ever,_ lay a hand on that girl again…" Beth heard Rick threaten the man in his grasp only to be interrupted again by a crying woman.

The sobs sounded too familiar for Beth. She had heard them before, she had tried to force them far from her mind before, but just as it was then they made her insides burn. A woman in her fifties appeared from the crowd, making her way to the center. Maggie pushed her sister's head into her chest and held her as close as she could, crying into the tangled blonde hair on top. Beth felt too weak to push her off, so powerlessly accepted her sister's comfort, hating herself more with every breath she breathed.

"That bitch…" The woman yelled through sobs. "That bitch killed me son!" The brunette woman who was overweight lunged toward Maggie and Beth. Maggie turned her body in anticipation only for Daryl to push the woman back. She collapsed onto her knees sobbing.

Michonne took Maggie's place with Beth as she stood and walked to the hysterical woman. Daryl looked over to the girl, only to see she was now standing with the help of the women.

Maggie bent down next to the sobbing woman below her. She looked up to Maggie, calming herself enough to speak a few muttered words.

"Maggie" The woman said weaker than Beth at that point. "You shoot her dead, she ain't worth keeping alive as a hostage. She don't deserve it, you shoot her and send her worthless piece of shit body to Negan."

Maggie watched the woman in horror before standing again to see her sister weakly standing with the help of Carol and Michonne. Maggie looked around from Rick holding Kal, to Daryl still trying to lunge at him. Paul had joined them, holding his arms out in peace as his eyes studied Beth in shock.

"Maggie" Alden stepped forward from the crowd. Maggie had grown to trust the Savior man she viewed as half a kid or at least she tolerated him, but anger filled her when he interrupted her in this moment while she was trying to sort out the million thoughts in her head.

"You should get her in the pin, Negan will bend for her. If you kill her, Negan will lose it. Just keep her with Gregory." Alden nodded towards the man still dressed in a suit, standing in the edge of the gates area as he watched the commotion, trying to figure out what was going on. "After it's over you can kill _Greene_ or do whatever the hell you want to, hell what we want to, but you could use her."

Maggie looked at the "kid" in disgust at the way he spoke of her sister. She backed away from him, breaking her confused stare with him to face the crowd of people around her. She looked to Rick one final time, but he was consumed with threatening the man in his arms.

"She, that girl right there, her name is Beth. " Maggie pointed to her sister. "She's not going in the pin." There was silence around her as she spoke. Everyone lingered on to her every word. "No one is going to touch her ever again and if anyone has a problem, with that, you come to me. Am I understood?" Maggie yelled, but was only answered in silence other than the woman sobbing by her feet. "Am I understood?" Maggie yelled angrily again.

There were a few grunts this time as Beth pushed Michonne and Carol off of her.

"She...she killed him… she killed Ronnie… she… she..." The woman cried. "My boy…" She went into hysterics again.

"I should… I shouldn't be here…" Beth pushed Michonne and Carol away and took a step away from them towards the gate again.

Half delusional she felt her knees give out, but for a second she forgot the pain. Beth took another steps, ignoring the wave of people that walked towards her as her vision left her again.

Then she felt herself falling into darkness. Beth silently cursed, knowing she was slipping out of consciousness. _God, I hate the dark._


	3. Chapter 3

**Hi guys! As always thank you guys so much for all of the continued support, it really means so much to read the reviews. So this chapter is way longer than the other ones, and I thought about splitting it in half, but I think it's kinda important to be kept together. I hope it's not too long or boring or hard to follow. I hope you enjoy and please let me know what you think and how I'm doing writing the characters. Enjoy and thank you!**

Chapter 3

Maggie gasped loudly, taking in as much of the warm air around her as she could as she watched her sister's body fall to the dirt at her feet. Daryl ran and caught her just before her head hit the grass. He pulled her up slightly with his hands entangled in blonde curls, but she was leaning towards the ground as he pushed against her. He scooped her legs up a few quick moments of shock later before Maggie had a chance to get to them. She was still completely out of it when Maggie finally reached Daryl and pushed the hairs out of her face. She softly rubbed her sister's arm, the fear of touching her obvious to everyone watching the scene, but they didn't matter, not to Maggie. Beth was the only thing that mattered in the fast paced moment that only seemed to speed up with every second as Maggie's entire world was flipped upside down.

"Beth! Beth!" Maggie called her in her own anxiety. The name felt each leaving her mouth, it had been a while since that one specific syllable had left her mouth, but now the girl was in front of her, and she knew the word would be coming back to life in their group. Maggie shook her sister's arm, trying to test if she had any consciousness without hurting her.

Daryl felt Beth's body shake in his arms with Maggie's ruckus towards the girl. He knew better than to tell her it was pointless, so he ignored the increasingly difficulty in holding the girl up while her sister was sent to the utmost panic level. Daryl obviously didn't like that Beth was knocked unconscious, nor that she had just been punched by a grown man, but he took a secret guilty pleasure in having Beth Greene in his arms. The feeling of her stomach rising or her slight twitches against him was just the desperate proof that he needed that it was her in his arms. He knew Maggie and the rest of them didn't have time to process it or even think about it as the new problems surrounded them, but he could hardly accept it. _Beth._ The simple name echoed in his mind and in the people's voices around him and he suddenly felt numb.

The group had hardly said the name after they had arrived in Alexandria. Maybe it was a way of coping with their grief or moving on, or maybe it was just a way of denial. Either way, Daryl had barely said the name out loud in two years, and when he thought of it, there was no pain that was more crippling or devastating that was accompanied with such a deserving pleasure of the torture. And yet now the name was pressed upon a hundred lips and he felt numb, it wasn't pain or pleasure. It was Beth, just shortly, but completely Beth.

Beth heard voices clearly in her head, but she couldn't tell whose they were or if the were real as her eyelids felt too heavy to lift. She was in darkness completely, but thought it would be worse to see. _Ain't nothing worth seeing in this world anymore._ A voice signaled deep inside of her that she couldn't differentiate from the others that seemed to be screaming at her. She didn't want to find out where she was in full consciousness or who she was with. She couldn't tell what was real as a million memories or dreams or hopes flashed in her mind; she couldn't tell which. She heard someone calling her name, a woman she thought. It sounded like Maggie, but she knew it could just as easily be a cruel illusion made by her self consciousness.

"She's out cold." Maggie said to the group. "Get Dana." Maggie called for the Kingdom's doctor in an act of working through her shock and confusion.

"I'm not treating her." The older woman was already standing directly behind Maggie, causing her to turn completely from her sister completely to face her.

"What?" Daryl repositioned Beth in his arms to make the weight easier to hold up without Maggie dragging her down.

"She doesn't deserve our help." The woman raised her eyebrows confidently with defiance and pride.

"Are you kidding me right now?" Maggie yelled half sarcastically in stress. It wasn't the right thing to say, nothing she said that day probably was, but on seeing a dead girl, she forgot how to be a diplomatic leader in the stress and anxiety of the day. "Bring her to the medical camper." Maggie turned to Daryl, trying to create a plan on the spot and hide her hesitance from the people, who had once followed her blindly.

He nodded and took a step towards the crowd, feeling hundred of eyes on him, but ignoring every pair except for the closed ones that belonged to the girl in his arms. Rick let go of Kal, who fell to the dirt without Rick holding him up. Maggie turned with the woman still sobbing at her feet, that she had completely blocked out. Everyone watched closely as the swarming people parted to let Daryl carrying the unconscious heavily pregnant girl covered in blood pass. He aggressively pushed through them with the others following him towards the array of makeshift homes spread through the grass. He felt her slipping from his arms with the layer of sweat separating them, but he only gripped her tighter.

"You got her?" Rick asked as he appeared next to him halfway through the rows of makeshift homes.

Daryl grunted in response. The sweat and exhaustion levels numbed the effects of Beth Greene being in his arms, but she was there, as alive as ever. Daryl made it to the door next to the small patch of land they pinned as a cemetery. Michonne pushed ahead of him to open the door for the pair, revealing a fluorescently lit room that mimicked what a hospital would have looked like, already occupied by Paul, Rosita and Tara.

Rosita and Tara were sitting on the chairs chattering in hushed whispers, only having arrived a few minutes earlier after the scene had begun to unfold out in the yard. Paul was standing against the wall, next to the open window with the curtains pulled to the side, letting in the utmost air and light, although the sun had just begun setting. Rosita and Tara both stood, with reluctance from Rosita as she rolled her eyes defiantly.

Daryl ignored them as he made his way into the area to find the fold out cot. He carefully laid the girl down putting her on top of the plain white sheets with her curls pushed against a pillow. His eyes, along with everyone else's in the room found the left side of her face, pulling distraction from every other factor she consisted of. Daryl stared in a silent agony as the hair naturally fell to the right side of her head, revealing the bald spot with at least a six inch scar stretching from her forehead to what should be her ear. Her ear seemed to have its own deformities as the outer layer was just missing only for the rough edges of her lobe to have the scars of obvious stitches across them. The group looked in horror for a few seconds before Michonne pushed past Daryl to have the decency to cover it as it was before with some misplaced curls.

"Jesus." Carol mumbled to herself under her breath for lack of a better word. What could she say? What could any of them say? The word shock only covered a half of what they were feeling as the stared at a girl they had watched die, they had cried over and they had finally gotten over, or most of them had at least.

"So this is her." Tara said, still only half understanding the situation.

"It's her alright." Michonne said as the group stared in shock.

"How is this even possible?" Carol asked, naturally turning to Rick. She didn't really expect him nor anyone else except Beth to have any answers, but she wanted to try something to rest the aggressive questions forming in her head.

"I… I dunno." Rick said just as dumbfounded as everyone else while rubbing his forehead in his palm. It was easy to see the exhaustion in him, along with the weakness that he ignored to deal with after losing Carl, but the group knew better than to say something.

Daryl walked to the window and looked out quickly, moving his gaze over to Maggie outside. She was talking to Gregory in the pin as most of the townspeople watched. Daryl could see her angrily storm off, ignoring the at least dozen people who tried to stop her and talk before he pulled the curtain closed, knowing Maggie was approaching the camper as the sun had begun to set.

"It ain't." Daryl responded sullenly looking back to the girl, who fisted her hand in what he assumed was a dream.

* * *

 _Beth was driving, just driving down an abandoned highway. She was in a red mustang that she had found the keys to, and figured it had a full tank of gas so why not. Her head pounded as she heard the sound of the tires screeching against the tar, knowing she would have been way over the speed limit if such a thing still existed. Beth laughed to herself with the thought of it, remembering a time when Maggie sat in the passenger's seat and corrected her every movement in her attempts at driving._

" _I don't cry anymore Daryl." She had told him. Now of all times the words rung in her head, making her want to do nothing more, but curl in a ball and cry as hunger gnawed at her stomach and exhaustion pushed against her eyelids. We all got jobs to do, Beth told herself feeling dizzy as she continued to speed down the desolate street. The words almost lost their meaning in her struggle as she tried to remember why they had once meant so much to her. It took her a second to hear a conversation that she had with Maggie at the prison when Glenn and their Daddy had went into the sick cell block. The memory warmed her under the wool blanket that she had draped over her legs and the full comforter she had around her shoulders and bare arms, but then left her with a feeling of coldness again once she remembered her Daddy was dead and she was searching endlessly for Maggie._

 _She was somewhere in Vermont she figured by the look of things, but she was not sure where. Everyone had told her not to go, they all said she'd be dead within the week, but here she was. Well, it had been three weeks, but she was still alive. Barely, she thought to herself as a smirk came to her face with her own stupidness. She ignored the feeling of fear that crept deep inside of her as she drove. So she drove, mile after mile, day after day._

" _You're not ready. It's only been a few weeks, you're still recovering. Please stay, you'll be dead within the week out there." The doctor had begged her as she packed a few things in a navy blue backpack one of the wards had found in a storage closet._

" _Screw you Edwards." Beth mumbled as she stuffed some gauze and a water bottle filled to the brim in the side of her bag. She was dressed in the same scrubs she had been forced to wear for weeks, as she pushed the scrunched up yellow T-shirt in her bag. She would be wearing it, but the whole thing was covered in blood. Beth stood still for a second thinking about it, lost in a faraway thought as she held an extra pair of scrub pants waiting to be packed._

" _Beth" The doctor called next to her, his voice much softer and kinder than it had been just seconds before. "If it's another hallucination, just relax, it'll be over in a minute."_

 _Beth snapped her heads toads him. "It's not." She pulled the zipper on her bag up and turned towards the door._

" _Beth, they're gone. You can hardly walk down a corridor without collapsing, what are you gonna do when you get surrounded by a dozen biters out there?"_

 _Beth's hand moved along the bandage on the top of her head, feeling her bare skin covered by gauze where a few curls used to fall freely. Her ear had a separate bandage on it, so she hadn't seen the full damage of the gunshot yet, but she knew it would be bad. Beth pulled her hand to her side again, grateful the cast was finally taken off._

" _I'll be a hell of a lot better than I am now." Beth pulled the bag over her back and pushed towards the door. Stevens grabbed her hand as she left and placed a knife in it, one she had never seen before. Her mind wandered to where the one she came in with was, trying to remember the last time she had seen it. She felt the metal press against her palm and she nodded at him in appreciation. Her stomach turned as she looked down the hall._

 _The floor was still stained with her blood and she sighed, trying to push it from her thoughts. Beth knew she should be dead, hell, maybe she wanted to be dead, but she wasn't and that was that. She just had to go and keep going._

" _Wait." Dr. Stevens called running after her as she descended down the corridor._

 _She turned to him. He came to her and quickly embraced her. Beth had never really liked him, but apparently she had meant something to him. She maybe even felt a tinge of pity or guilt leaving him, an emotion she would come to forget about for quite a while._

" _It's not too late." She said as she pulled back. "People can come back." She whispered confidently, feeling a sudden migraine, but doing her best to not let it show. Beth tasted iron in her mouth, knowing she had bit too far into her cheek in an effort to hide her vulnerability. Looking back at her words to the doctor, Beth could almost laugh at what she viewed as pure stupidity._

" _You don't hide pain well." The doctor smiled at her. "Don't get yourself killed, Beth."_

 _Beth sighed. If only it would have been that simple for her. As she smiled and turned from him, she had no idea death would soon be the least of her fears._

" _You can always come back." The doctor said after there was some distance between them._

" _No I can't." Beth was still smiling as she made it to the end of the hall._

" _Goodbye Beth."_

 _I hate goodbyes. She didn't respond, but just disappeared out the doors, gone from Grady forever._

 _Beth felt the cold air push against her face immediately. It was a Winter month, she did not know which though. Her arms tensed with just the T-shirt and the light grey sweater she had worn when she was shot, that was now covered in her own blood. She walked a few weak steps before finding a few cars. Her hands were shaking so bad with the cold that she could hardly pull the handle open to a green minivan. She eventually pulled it open just as a woman walked with brown hair just like Maggie's lunged at her. Beth hopped back in fear before stabbing it._

 _Her head pounded harder as she pulled the now lifeless body out and tossed it on the concrete ground. It had been a while since she had killed a walker. It had been a while since she had seen a walker._

 _Beth's eyes searched the car for a set of keys, but didn't see any. She sighed, not allowing herself to get upset. She looked around the car in hopelessness only to find a canned peas container just standing up on the floor. She smiled to herself and silently said a prayer to her father, innocently thinking he had helped her in some way. Thinking back on it, Beth could laugh out loud at the thought._

 _She pulled the can up to put it in her backpack, feeling the curved lines of the metal. Beth forced herself to open the car door again, feeling the immediate raw temperature spread through her body. The wind pierced her face, but nonetheless she took a step over the dead woman at her feet and made her way to the next car. Her arms were covered in goosebumps as her thimble fingers latched onto the handle of a red mustang. Beth smiled as she immediately spotted the keys in the ignition._

 _She could not help feel a slight side of fear with her gratitude in her luck at a full tank of gas, as Beth Greene had only had her driver's permit when the world when to shit. She pushed the thought aside as she started the engine, trying to convince herself she knew more than the basics. The engine hummed as it started and she nervously started to drive off._

 _Beth drove for a few hours down the abandoned highway, looking at the stray walkers she saw in the tree lines. She hadn't ever been alone in her life before, too young to have gone to college, too loved to go anywhere else, but now here she was. Her mind wandered aimlessly, thinking of Maggie, her Daddy… Daryl._

 _His face burned in her mind. She refused to allow herself to cry. She had told him she didn't cry anymore and wanted to keep that promise. Still the thoughts were painful, she just wanted her family. She imagined what they would do if she found them._ When I find them _, Beth corrected herself, trying to keep faith in an impossible task. Her plan was to go to Virginia to try and find Noah. She figured he might have some idea of where Daryl and Rick and the rest of them were._

 _Beth stupidly wondered where Maggie was at the moment. Carol had told her she was with her, she was with everyone before she was abducted. She knew Maggie was still alive or at least was before Carol was kidnapped. She wanted so badly to run into her arms and hug her sister and never be away from her again. The same went for Daryl. Beth wanted him to hug her. She figured her death would have hit him hard, but he would move on. He always did somehow, they all did._

 _Beth drove down the road for hours that day, watching the sunset as she was lost in the thoughts of her family and a million other things. She did not want to pull over that night, but did not really have a choice as her head's pounding worsened. Eventually she pulled over to the tree line and tried to think about what Daryl would do in her situation._

 _It was pointless though. Daryl wasn't there; she was alone. Alone and completely terrified. Beth found a light blanket in the back seat and held her knife tightly as she pulled herself into the back seat._

 _The material were leathery and cold, but she lied on the floor, hoping not to be spotted by the dead or the living. Beth shivered as she lied in the pitch black of the night, terrified, in pain and utterly alone in the world. She felt tears well in her eyes, but forced herself to swallow it before they dropped down her face._

 _She didn't sleep much that night. She fell asleep a few times, but would jerk awake in a nightmare and feel even more afraid. She awoke at dawn and decided she was done trying to sleep. Her stomach gnawed at her in hunger, but she wanted to save her only food for when she needed it. Beth draped her blanket around her shoulders as she took to the open road again._

 _The second day was much harder than the first, the third even more pressing. Eventually Beth lost count of the torturous days in her journey towards Virginia. She scavenged a few more canned foods through a few abandoned houses, but still had her can of peas to eat. Now the stupid can was in a way a sign of hope, a sign she wasn't alone. Her Daddy was watching over her and was going to get her to Maggie, where she belonged. Then, and only then, would she open the stupid can with Maggie._

 _The first two weeks Beth managed to find a few alone houses that she risked scavenging through. She didn't find much and took even less with her, but never stayed even a night in the houses. Her car was packed with a few blankets that she usually covered in and whatever food she managed. She figured early on that if found something to hunt with she'd try it, recalling everything she had learned from Daryl. The memories were painful, but after three weeks her mind was far from hunting._

 _She only had the one can of peas and she was close to eating them when she saw the signs for Virginia one grey afternoon._

 _Beth shivered in the blankets that she had scavenged. They had a distinctive old smell that she assumed she only added to from weeks of not bathing and sitting around them for twenty four hours a day. The car she had took hers had her supplies sprawled out across it messily, which Beth knew was a bad idea in case she needed a quick escape, but she felt too weak to do anything about it. She knew she had lost weight since she left Grady as she had hardly eaten anything in days. It was a vicious cycle as the less she ate the worse she got, and therefore was too weak to scavenge. Virginia, I'm close now, they can take care of me then. I just need to find Maggie and Daryl. Beth convinced herself that day, never feeling so weak in her life. She imagined that any minute she'd just see them standing there and she'd just stop driving. She thought she was too exhausted and sickly to even walk, but that didn't matter. Daryl could grab her and carry her to see Maggie. Then she could she sleep and eat her peas. She laughed, but then wanted to cry._

 _Her head pounded constantly and she struggled to keep her eyes opened in exhaustion as she only slept a few hours a night. Still she refused to cry, that wouldn't come until she had something real to cry about, someone to cry to. Beth would imagine the words her family would say to her in her head. It all felt so real that she could almost smell them and feel them alone in her car, despite it all just being her childish imagination. She would try and act tough, but in the moment all she wanted to do was have their arms around her. Her thoughts consumed her, but somewhere deep inside her she knew that she was driving pointlessly just waiting to die or be killed. If only it was that simple..._

 _Beth looked outside at the empty street and a walker dressed in a pink shirt. It looked like a man, but she could hardly tell. It was the most interesting thing to look at as she drove by herself. Her eyes closed in a blink and then she found herself staring at a baby lying in a pink blanket in the middle of the road. She stared in shock, suddenly realizing it was Judith. She had the same baby blanket around her as Beth could swear she heard her screaming from inside her car. The screams echoed in Beth's ears in the small space. Beth quickly swerved the car to not hit the baby she had once loved so much that was right there in front of her, as real as anything else to Beth, only to smash into a tree._

 _Darkness, god I hate the dark._

" _Dave, come look here."_

" _Wow, pretty lil' thin'. I go first."_

" _What about the rules?"_

" _Ain't no one gotta tell. I'll let you go second, if you shut up already."_

" _Alright, looks like she's wakin' up."_

" _Hey there blondie…"_

* * *

Beth felt a pinch in her arm before anything else. Her eyes flicked open with the pain. She pushed back in shock, unsure of where she was as she watched a man take the tale end of a needle from her arm.

"Beth, easy. Do you know where you are?" A sweet happy voice rang out.

Beth turned to her side to reveal Maggie sitting next to her as she felt blankets stick to her clothes.

"Maggie!" Beth said half ecstatic as her situation slowly came back to her.

Maggie's hand grazed the side of her forehead as tears dropped down her face. Maggie then proceeded to hug her sister tightly. Beth did not lift her arms, but didn't protest her in any way, enjoying the security she felt.

"How are you feeling?" Beth pulled back from Maggie when she heard another familiar voice speak to her right.

Maggie let her go, but grabbed her hand tightly as Beth turned to see Carol walking towards her from her stance on the wall with Daryl. _Daryl!_ Beth thought to herself, feeling all the confusion and excitement she had spent two years trying to forget about.

Beth sat up in bed, pushing her head against the headboard. Maggie grabbed her uninjured arm and pulled her up just as Beth caught sight of the sling her other arm was in. The blanket fell below her waist revealing her stomach with her arm naturally resting on it in a blue sling. Beth almost blushed as she knew how strange she must appear to all of them.

Beth looked around at the people in the room. Michonne was grinning as she stood opposite from Daryl, who just stood in a corner looking grim in his confusion.

"Maggie, should I, now?" The dark skin man who had woken her with the needle asked as he pointed to a wired machine with a screen.

"Beth, this is Siddiq, he's a doctor. He's gonna take a look at you, okay?" Maggie nodded towards the man.

Beth nodded, suddenly uncomfortable looking around the room. She looked around to see a few unfamiliar faces standing around, along with the woman she now knew as Rosita.

"How many months are you?" The man asked her.

Beth cringed and looked down at her grey T-shirt, showing her bare skin. She suddenly felt the urge to shower or at least strip from her soiled shirt, but tried to push the thought from her mind. Everyone was watching her; she knew she owed them an explanation, a few explanations.

"Um… I think like eight months." Beth looked up at her sister again.

"Can you lift your shirt?" Siddiq asked as he prepared a familiar gel to Beth.

Her fingers found the edge of her T-shirt and she blushed as she exposed the rest of her stomach to the room. Daryl's eyes moved to her face just as she looked up to him.

She studied his face, taking in the grey hairs in the stubbles that stuck out of his chin so distinctively. She wanted to say something to him, but no words came out. He looked deeply into the bright blue eyes that were once entirely full of hope and innocence. Only one thing was certain for Daryl; it was Beth Greene staring at him.

Daryl was not listening to a single other thing going on around him. He could not have told anyone who was in the room, nevermind what the doctor was saying. He watched Beth's shoulders tense in shock of a cold feeling on her swollen stomach, but he refused to look at the protruding area. He kept his eyes on hers, studying the seemingly endless area of sparkling blueness that seemed to draw him in more each time it disappeared from him as her eyelids shut in a split second blink.

Daryl didn't see her pregnant stomach with a horizontal scar under her right ribs, the scars that spoiled her face, the deformity in her ear or everything missing from her eyes. He didn't want to see it, he knew what he wanted to see and he was watching it as intensely as he could, scared he would wake up from some sick dream in a matter of seconds if he looked away.

Beth turned her head away from the screen as she heard the heartbeat. She didn't want to look, hoping her denial was not obvious to those around her. If it was, the group was in no position to push her on it, as it would be the least of their questions.

"And there's your little girl." Siddiq said too cheerfully.

Beth turned away, feeling the heartbeat of her unborn child torture her as her head pounded to the rhythm.

"Mhm" She managed to grunt, pushing the tears far from her eyes before they became visible.

"Now Beth, do you know anything about your condition?" Siddiq asked.

"Um..." The heartbeat still seemed to be blaring to her although it was hardly distracting to anyone else. "Um… I" She couldn't think with the sound. "Can we turn that damn thing off?" Beth suddenly snapped, turning her head towards the screen and accidentally catching a glimpse of the fetus. She felt the tears forming in the back of her throat, but she forced them as deep as possible, burrowing them in the darkest chamber of her mind that she hide from everyone she could.

"Yeah… yeah absolutely." Siddiq looked around the room, feeling the tension rise with her unexpected outburst. He unplugged the machine and grabbed a paper towel to rub the gel off her stomach. She flinched as he neared her and he immediately knew not to touch her. The group watched tensely as Maggie grabbed the brown piece of paper towel from the man and wiped the clump of cool liquid off her sister's stomach.

"Sorry." Beth managed to mumble under her breath, too ashamed to make eye contact with anyone so she stared at her stained T-shirt until Maggie pulled it down as far as it would go.

"No Bethy, you have nothing to be sorry for." Maggie pushed a lock of curls behind Beth's right ear before leaning down and kissing her forehead. "Don't you be worrying about _anything_." Maggie said softly to her.

"So did anyone explain your condition to you?" Siddiq asked again.

"Not really, Carson told Negan, but he just said I'd be fine…that they were taking care of it…" Beth darted her eyes down at the first mention of Negan. She immediately felt the room tense again at his name.

"Well you have a condition known as preeclampsia." Siddiq continued. "It means your blood pressure is too high and is potentially dangerous for you and the baby."

Beth nodded, but moved her eyes around the room nervously. Her eyes moved to Daryl's, who was still watching her without doctor was still talking, but she wasn't listening. It was Maggie who was asking questions and genuinely cared about the answers. Beth's mind was a million miles away.

"Beth?" Maggie shook her arm. Beth snapped back into consciousness. "Sorry, what?" She turned to her sister and the doctor.

"I asked if you've been through any trauma lately." The doctor repeated.

"Um... a little I guess." Beth said, feeling the heat of the cabin suffocate her with the dozen people inside.

"A little, I see." Siddiq said calmly. "You need to seriously take it easy, if your pressure gets this high again it's dangerous for the baby and you. We could need to induce labor. Okay?"

"Mhm" Beth mumbled.

"I gave her something that should bring the blood pressure down, but I'll check again in the morning. It's gonna need to be watched closely." Siddiq turned to Maggie. "I can finish the exam in the morning, she could use some rest."

"Thank you." Maggie said grabbing his hand before he turned out the trailer.

There was silence for a minute and Beth could feel the first questions being prepared to come. She tried to delay it as best she could.

"Do you have a shower?" She blurted out awkwardly. "Or some clean clothes?"

"Yeah, yeah of course." Maggie said. "Why don't we move to the house?" She turned to the group. "Might be more comfortable?" She suggested as she squeezed her sister's swollen shoulder.

"Can you walk?" Carol grabbed Beth's uninjured arm as she swung herself from the bed.

"Think so." Beth mumbled and pushed herself off the bed, hearing the springs bounce as her impending weight pushed off of it. She felt Maggie's hand on her back as she took a step towards the obvious door. Daryl pushed it open and held it as Carol led the girl out. Maggie turned for a second and waited for the room to file out before leaving herself.

Beth had gotten a few feet in front of her, before Maggie attempted to catch up. She was walking with Rick holding her arm up and Michonne rubbing her back. Maggie quickly ran up to them. Daryl and Carol hung back, slowly following the others.

It was dark out as the group made their way into the house, ignoring the stares from the few townsfolk that were still awake. Beth tried to ignore all the people watching her every movement. They were basically stepping over bodies as they reached the stairs inside the house with three civilizations' populations crowded at Hilltop.

"Easy sweetheart." Michonne said to Beth as they made their way up the first flight of stairs.

Daryl watched her back as she took small steps up the each steep. He could sense her struggle, even without her facing him. He could also somewhat tell Carol was trying to talk to him, but he wasn't listening to a single word.

"You okay?" Maggie soothed her sister's back as they made it up the third flight of stairs to the bedroom Rick had occupied the night before.

"Mhm" Beth mumbled, feeling her back and feet ache.

"And here we go." Michonne held Beth's hand in as she took a step in the bedroom many of the others had already walked in.

There were a few seats and sleeping bags laid around the room with bags of clothes. Beth eyed the crib next to the queen sized bed with the golden comforter, and she didn't want to ask where Judith was, not yet. Beth looked around counting the faces, trying to remember who was at Grady for her _rescue_ and who wasn't.

There were only five faces she recognized in the room, but that was enough. It was a lot more than she had woken up with. Beth tried to block out her memory of that morning, along with every moment she had lived through in the years since she had seen Daryl, Rick and Michonne were standing in a hallway at Grady Memorial Hospital. She cringed, knowing that was the last time she was even remotely truly happy.

"Glenn." Beth mumbled to herself, not meaning for anyone to hear.

Carol had told him he was alive with Maggie before she was captured at Grady. The thought rushed to Beth quickly as her head pounded and too much came to her all at once. Beth hid her pain from those around her as she lifted her head to look at their faces, biting deep enough into her lip to draw blood.

Michonne shook her head and Beth was grateful Maggie had walked into the conjoined bathroom to prepare it for her. The information felt numb to her, just something else to slid off her as if her face was a force field, not letting anything reach her inner feelings. The words didn't sink in or maybe they did. It didn't matter, Beth didn't change her look.

"Carl." Beth said half to herself, trying to feel something again, but only feeling the numb satisfaction of her own coldness that she had perfected. Beth saw the bloodshot tear filled eyes of Rick and she had her answer before he spoke. She didn't want to ask how or when, or didn't think or care enough to ask. There was a lot to ask, and if she asked she'd have to answer the same.

Daryl watched her emotionless face glare around the room, still on edge. Her hand found her stomach and she rubbed it as they all stared at her like some alien creature on exhibit. He didn't care, she was there; that's all that mattered.

"There's towels in there." Maggie spoke softly, appearing out of the bathroom's door frame. "And I'm gonna get you a change of clothes now." She said to her sister.

"Mhm" Beth managed to mumble.

She took a few steps toward the bathroom before resting her hand against the door frame with a wave of nausea.

"Beth?" Maggie grabbed her extended arm in concern.

"I'm good." She assured, recomposing herself without the nausea dispersing yet.

"If you feel dizzy, or need help, just call. I'm right here, I'm not going anywhere." Maggie kissed her sister's forehead before letting her into the cramped bathroom. Beth was half grateful when she closed the door behind her, but she knew better than to lock it, knowing Maggie was fully ready to bust threw in case she collapsed or something. Beth heard hushed voices outside the door, knowing she was the center of their conversations.

She sat on the closed toilet seat, above the cotton towels and pushed her sweaty curls to their natural part. Beth forced herself to look in the mirror, knowing how much pain it would cause her to endure. Her eyes traced her own scare for a split second before she turned, not wanting to see anymore of her body. _Always look._ She whispered to herself.

* * *

"We need to start asking questions." Maggie walked back into her bedroom with a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, obviously intended be given to Beth. She took in the distinctive smell that no one else except her could probably recognize, remembering the last person who had worn them. "I mean what the hell? We saw her die, Daryl, you carried her body out."

"And then we left her in a truck." Carol recalled.

"So what she just woke up? Shit like that just doesn't happen." Michonne added.

"And now we find her with Negan, she's got a lot of explaining to do." Maggie ran her hands through her hair before throwing the clothes in the bathroom when she could hear the water running down the drain.

"She's knocked up too." Rosita added with a streak of sarcasm or maybe just plain meanness.

"If Negan raped-" Rick started.

"He's against rape remember? She would've been one of his wives." Michonne said.

"I sure as hell ain't never seen 'er there." Daryl grumbled from the corner.

"So you don't think it's his?" Rick asked.

"She wasn't at Sanctuary, she was with Eugene." Tara said, reminding the room she was even still there. Paul and Aaron had left the group, leaving only the people who knew her before plus Tara and Rosita.

"Ain't exactly protectin' 'im." Daryl said as Carol walked closer to him, to stand beside him with her arm resting on his shoulder that he seemed to completely ignore.

"This is pointless." Maggie said sadly, sitting on the side of the bed. "None of this makes sense. She died, it just doesn't make sense."

"Ain't no point wonderin'. She's 'ere, all that matta's." Daryl grumbled.

"Once she's settled, we can start asking. She looks exhausted, maybe just give her the night to rest. Find out what we can from the others and start asking her in the morning." Rick said.

They all simultaneously heard the shower switch off. Maggie ran her hand threw her hair again before standing and fixing the sheets, anticipating her sister to appear in the bedroom again after a few minutes.

* * *

Beth sat on the toilet seat before her hands found the edge of her T-shirt. It was a woman's shirt, although obviously not meant for maternity wear. Beth could almost hear the conversation that she had took part in the other morning when she put it on. She had slept in it at what she assumed was her new home until Negan's war was over. Beth pulled it off hearing voices run around in her head, forcing herself to not respond as she told herself they weren't real, but wasn't entirely sure.

Beth didn't have a bra on. Her breasts hung bare above her stomach without the safety of her T-shirt. Her hands found the scar under her ribs and felt along it. _Don't forget, always look._ The words rang through her ears. _They just make you more beautiful. Make you stronger, more ruthless... more sexy._ Beth shut her eyes trying to block it all out. _Always look._

Beth forced herself to stand to remove her jeans. She lifted her foot and caught a glimpse of the layer of dirt that covered it from being barefoot all day. Beth pulled her light colored jeans downs, struggling with her swollen legs. She pulled down the frilly pair of black lace underwear she had on, leaving her completely stripped.

Beth's hand moved down the scar down her right thigh. She squeezed her eyes tight, feeling all the pain in it. She forced herself to open them again and look as her hand cupped her legs, that were freshly shaved the morning before. Beth turned the knob on the shower causing lukewarm water to spray down on her.

It was colder than she was used to. She had always loved scalding hot showers and had grown used to them lately. The water made her bones cold, but the displeasure felt good to her.

 _Fighting will just make it worse blondie._ Beth couldn't help, but let out a deep hollowing breath as the water washed away the layer of grime her skin and hair were covered in. Her arm ached and she wondered if she was supposed to have taken the brace off before she went in the shower as she had.

 _I get it now._

 _You can't let them see you like that._

 _Wow! That was badass. I mean you just stabbed him._

Beth felt herself hyperventilating as she couldn't hide from herself alone as a million voices haunted her.

 _We all got jobs to do._

 _Kill all the men. It's the order, would you like me to tell Negan that you're not listening to me, Dwight? I don't think he'd like to hear it._

 _So you have a very important decision to make._

Beth couldn't find air, she felt the walls falling over her.

 _If anyone ever, I mean anyone, ever tries to touch Greene here again, I will cut every one of your throats out!_

 _I used to be like you, weak, looked at the good things and fought against the bad. Cyndie, don't be stupid._

 _You have a very important decision right now to make._

 _I need a drink._

 _Please don't, please somebody help! Please, pl-please!_

 _Daryl!_

"Daryl" Beth said the two syllable word out loud and pushed the knob forward on the showed, feeling a shiver go through her bones. She took a step out of the shower, still hearing muffled voices outside.

Beth dried herself with the towel, forcing herself to recompose as she ran the maroon towel up and down her limbs. She squeezed the ends of her hair before carefully placing straightened hairs over the side of scar to cover it. She pulled a pair of underwear and sweatpants over her legs, wondering who the stuff belonged to. The clothes were obviously from a man and were worn in quite a bit, but she didn't take much notice of it.

Beth pulled the plain white T-shirt over her stomach and instantly took in a manly scent before replacing the sling over her arm. Her hands once more ran up her slightly damp legs that she could hardly see over the bulge from her stomach, but she knew exactly where the scar was located. Beth grabbed the grey pair of sweatpants next to her and wondered why Maggie had not given her a bra with the others.

Beth quickly pulled the pair of pants over her legs, suddenly feeling the need to leave the enclosed room and be reminded of her reality. Her hair hung heavy; dripping and tangled, as she watched it stain the clean white T-shirt, reminding her she hadn't put any shampoo or conditioner in it.

Beth wanted to escape the enclosing walls more than anything, but forced herself to take one final look in the shiny mirror hanging above the sink. The glass was fogged with steam from the stuffy room, but she could still see her reflection through the mist.

"Always look." She whispered to herself before turning and opening the wooden door to plunge into the eyes of a dozen people, itching to yell out the questions looming around the room.

Beth walked into the room, slowly making her way to the bed as she felt the room tense with the quiet tap of her clean feet squeak against the wood. Beth sat on the bed next to her sister, who wrapped her arms around Beth's back to ease her down. Beth half blushed at it, but pushed the thought from her mind as she pulled her feet onto the bed.

She was exhausted, but wanted nothing more than to never have to close her eyes again. She of course wasn't planning on letting any of the group learn this, nor learn anything else yet. She knew they would be asking around, trying to find out anything they could before she answered their questions. She knew they'd ask, maybe not that night, but soon. And she knew she owed them the truth, and she'd have to deal with the consequences. But not yet, for the night she could let them pamper her and care for her like some lost pup; wounded and innocent.

"Daryl" She said his name to the room, looking over to the brutish man standing in the corner. He had aged so much since she had lost saw him, they all had, but Beth didn't allow herself to focus on their changes knowing her own looks must've terrified all of them.

He grunted, while waiting for her to say something else, watching her head lie against a pillow.

She didn't respond. In truth she didn't need him to say anything; she just wanted to whisper the word to herself. "Maggie" She whispered, looking to her right at her older sister.

"I'm right here Bethy. I'm not going anywhere." Maggie kissed her sister's hand. "You should get some rest. You look exhausted. We'll all be here in the morning."

Beth nodded and Maggie stood, before ushering the others out, intending to lie down with her sister once the others left. Beth watched a few people walk out the door into the hallway, each making some sort of goodbye or loving motion to her, except for Rosita.

"I need to sleep alone." Beth turned to her sister, once there was only Daryl and Carol left in the room besides the two Greene sisters. "I just…" Beth's voice trailed off at a loss of words.

"O-okay" Maggie said surprised, but adapting quickly. "You don't gotta explain yourself." Maggie kissed her palm once more and stood from the bed, only for Beth to speak to her again.

"I know there's a lot I gotta explain." It almost looked painful for Beth to speak, but a quick moment later she forced her cold expression over her face to hide any hints of her true feelings. "I know that and I get you needing to know. Tomorrow I'll try…" She searched for the words as she wrinkled her forehead. "I'll try." She said again, wishing she could push away the strong feeling of dread building in her stomach.

"I love you, Beth." Maggie said, trying to read her sister's face, but it had resorted to the same dull look again by time she had finished speaking.

Beth reviled in the words for a minute, pretending they would be true forever. She closed her eyes and took in the feel of the moment, wishing it was real. Beth wanted nothing more than to live the rest of days with her sister and the others coddling her, and telling her how much they loved her. She couldn't deny the level of pleasure she felt, pushing aside all her feelings of guilt.

"I love you too, Maggie." Beth whispered. The words felt like acid in her mouth and loomed in the room long after she said them.

Maggie turned and left the room. Daryl and Carol had just reached the door frame, when he took one final look at the girl. He couldn't fight his instincts as he darted towards her again. She was sitting with her knees bent on the bed, awkwardly leaning against the headboard with a far off glare in her eyes.

Beth felt Daryl engulf her into him again. He wanted to feel her once more. Hell, he never wanted to stop feeling her again. He felt her head rest on his shoulder as he buried his face in the wet blonde hairs that were straightened with moisture. Her damp T-shirt moistened his black button down shirt, but he didn't seem to notice with the smell of her engulfing his senses.

"I missed ya so bad Beth. Don't you ever go nowhere again." Daryl let go of her slowly after he did his version of a whisper into her deformed ear. He felt like a child again, hugging a girl and saying some soppy shit, but for the moment he didn't care. He didn't care how he looked to her or anyone else in the moment, Beth had come back to him. That was all that mattered. She was real. Beth was there.

"You still will." She whispered in his ear quiet enough for only him to hear in three words that maybe were the only real emotions that she had let herself truly feel all day. Beth pressed her hand to his face, wishing he wouldn't leave, but would never say it.

He didn't respond, but he looked at her in a way that no one had in a long time, especially that day. It wasn't confusion, guilt, pity, hatred, or pure fear. She didn't know what it was, but his eyes shattered her to pieces. Her hand felt so soft against his face that he pressed more into it. Carol watched from the door frame, seeing Daryl flash his vulnerable side only for it to disappear just as quick as it came.

Daryl pulled back and walked to the door frame to Carol in reluctance. Beth watched his back as he departed from her bedside and wanted to call him back. There was so much she wanted to say, but she knew it would be wrong. _All of this is wrong_ , she told herself. _It's not real._

"We're all just in Maggie's office, across the hall. You need anything, you just call." Carol warned. "I missed you, Beth." She was just starting to get used to saying the name out loud again, much less seeing the girl living and breathing.

Beth didn't respond, but watched Daryl flip the lights switch off and heard the door shut. She shuttered alone in the room, but preferred to shut her eyes in the dark rather than be haunted by her demons with her eyes opened.

And in the darkness she plunged into the haunted hidden corners of her mind.

* * *

 **Thanks for reading and please let me know what you thought; good or bad. I might post the next chapter a little earlier in the week.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Hi guys! I just wanted to thank all of you guys for the awesome reviews, it means a lot to me that you like the story! Sorry I'm a little late, I was having a problem uploading, but I figured it out. Anyways sorry if the buildup for some answers is getting annoying but I wanted to establish a few things in the characters first, but I promise answers are coming about Beth. So hopefully you decide to stick with it! Next chapter will contain a major flashback that will explain some things, but there will definitely be a few more flashbacks throughout the next chapters. Please continue to be awesome and let me know what you think!**

* * *

Chapter 4

"Maggie." Enid abruptly pushed the door of Maggie's office open, out of breath as she had just ran up three flights of stairs.

The group was all standing around, talking about the topic that had been in every person at Hilltop's mind since that afternoon. The man that the young girl called Jesus was in the center and had obviously just been speaking based on his stance when she had busted in. Enid figured he was trying to come up with some solution or at least an explanation for the pregnant girl. She knew that the girl was Maggie's sister and she had been with Negan, but Enid had not even been told a name yet.

Maggie instantly saw the concern of the girl's face as she caught her breathe while awkwardly leaning on the door knob, half scared to come in the room.

Maggie's face turned stern as Rick spoke to the teenage girl. "What is it, Enid?" Rick spoke quickly, but clearly.

"The girl" Enid stated. "Outside" She mumbled as Maggie pushed past her to the hallway. The group all followed, running down the flights of stairs and basically emptied hallways without thinking about why they were so.

Maggie ran through the house as quickly as she could, half terrified of what she would find at the end of her journey. She pushed the door open with the others directly next to her and felt the warm summer night air embrace her willingly. It was only a few feet down the dirt path that was rubbing off on her brown boots that the apparent crowd had formed. Maggie and the group began pushing through them until they began to move willingly to make a path for them only to reveal Beth on the ground with the woman, who had claimed Beth had killed her son just a few hours earlier, standing above her. The group sprinted to them just as the heavy woman with a brown bob of hair similar to Maggie's pushed her fist into the girl's face for a blow, that was seemingly not her first.

"Get the hell off her!" Maggie screamed as she made it to them.

Paul and Morgan pulled the woman off and got her on the ground a few feet away from Beth, who had just made it to a crouched position after the blow sent her down on the dirt.

"Jesus Christ, what the hell happened?" Maggie started to reach out to her sister. "Are you okay Bethy? Are you hurt?"

The group watched as Maggie carefully placed her hand to Beth's face, trying to lift it in order to inspect it. Beth jerked away quickly sending herself stumbling back a few steps as she pushed away and onto her feet. Maggie jumped in shock at the sudden movement.

"Beth" Maggie called, standing herself and walking towards where her sister had taken refuge from Maggie's grip.

Daryl watched her lift her face to the surrounding group showing her right eye, swollen and bruised to the point where it was unable to open. Her whole face was swollen and bruised, but her expression was pure terror in a severity that he had never seen before. Maggie took another step towards her in the moonlight, as Michonne and Rick followed in her lead to inclose around the already surrounded girl.

"Don't!" Beth suddenly revealed the knife she had in her left palm. The blade had obviously been pressed against her palm a while as she turned it around to point it at her sister, revealing her hand covered in her own blood. "Don't touch me!" She screeched as Maggie reached out to her before she pulled the knife and half swung it at Maggie. Maggie leaped back in confusion and fear, as Rick neared the two sisters slowly.

"O-okay Beth. It's okay, no ones touching. Just put the knife down." Rick reasoned as the Maggie backed up slowly in tears.

Beth was sobbing and shaking as she still held the knife up, turning slightly to point it at Rick now. "Please, please don't! Help me-ee! Please! Somebody help!" She sobbed and turned from Rick to her right, facing part of the surrounding crowd.

"Beth, no ones hurting you. It's Rick, you're with Maggie." He tried to calm her, putting his arms up in a motion of peace. "Do you know who I am?"

Beth hysterically sobbed as Daryl watched her back shake and shudder with every ripening screech from the girl.

"Don't! Stop!" She turned back to Rick, but her eyes were a million miles away.

Daryl stepped forward as she sobbed and threatened to stab the man in front of her.

"Beth!" Maggie screamed from a few feet back.

"Get away from me! Don't touch me!" Beth screeched with an ear piercing pitch.

"Beth." Daryl spoke calmly as he approached the sobbing girl, going closer than Rick had dared. "Beth, 's Daryl."

"Daryl!" Rick said in an angry whisper, not wanting to alarm the girl anymore.

"'S Daryl, Beth. Ya know me." He said reaching out to her.

"Please! Somebody help! Daryl! Help!" She screamed to herself.

Daryl grabbed her wrist tight enough so that she couldn't move her hand as she tried to slash him.

"Drop it." He said, calmly. "'S Daryl. Ain't no one hurtin' you. I got ya." He made her look at him in the moonlight as she fought to escape his grip.

"Let go of me… please… let-" Beth's voice slowly softened as Daryl refused to let her move.

"'S me Beth." He said to her softly, ignoring Maggie crying behind him and the hundreds of stares he was receiving.

"Da-Da-Daryl?" She stuttered in question.

"'S me."

"You didn't come!" She screamed again and he pulled her against his chest as the sterling silver dropped to the ground. "You-you're too late! You didn't…"

She screamed into his chest as he held her as tightly as he could, feeling tears and slobber against his lightweight shirt. He tried to stabilize her as every word sent a stuttering sob through her body making her heave and lunge.

"I got ya." He said softly.

"You didn't… you didn't… You-" Daryl felt her body go limp against his as his eyes traced the needle syringed into her arm up to Siddiq holding the other end. Daryl scooped the rest of her body up once she had fallen into a sleeping sedated state. He looked at Rick with the girl in his arms in question.

Maggie was crying to Carol as she watched the scene play out in front of her and was in no state to give orders. Rick looked just as dumbfounded as everyone else.

"I should check her blood pressure, make sure the baby's okay." Siddiq interrupted the moment.

"You should." Rick nodded. "The medical RV." He looked to Daryl, intending for him to carry the girl.

Daryl grunted and once more pushed past an array of people to one of the first few Rv's stationed. Siddiq led the way as Rick walked back a few steps to Maggie. She had collapsed on the floor crying with Carol and Michonne comforting her.

"C'mon." Rick pulled her off the floor and half hugged her as he forced her to follow Daryl.

Rick knew it wasn't good for her people to see her like this, but it was the least of his concerns at that point. He glanced once more at Jesus, who was with the sobbing woman that had attacked Beth.

"Put her in the pin." He instructed.

Paul nodded, but didn't move his stance next to the collapsed woman letting out hollowing sobs.

Rick ran his hands through his hair in stress, trying not to think of the ongoing war with Negan while dealing with the severe internal problems. He carefully guided Maggie into the medical trailer and helped her sit on the closest chair before looking around.

Daryl was kneeling down besides the white bed Beth was laying on, looking completely limp and lifeless, holding her bleeding hand with a look Rick had never seen before in him. Carol and Michonne followed him in and looked around as Siddiq pulled Beth's T-shirt up to where her breasts would begin. Rick eyed the scar under her ribs on her right side, but looked away in discomfort.

Carol walked to the other side of the bed, carefully dodging the ultrasound machine that Siddiq was setting up.

"Rosita and Tara are sorting things out, out there." Carol nodded towards the sealed door.

Siddiq gracefully pushed a needle in her arm and took it out, only to quickly toss it on his side table. The walls of the room were white, too white in Daryl's opinion, but it was supposed to mock a hospital. Carol's hand pushed through the still slightly moist hairs that had once more began to resemble tangled curls on Beth's head. She sighed and pulled her hand back, knowing Siddiq needed her to move.

Carol walked back over to Daryl's side and proceeded to run her hand through his own messy hair. He didn't make an attempt to move her, but hardly acknowledged her as Siddiq rubbed the tail of his machine on the girl's stomach. There was so much more fear and uncertainty in the room than there was earlier as the fetus's heartbeat filled the silent room.

"She looks healthy." Siddiq told Rick about the unborn child.

"And her?" Rick nodded to Beth, lying with her bloody fingers entwined with Daryl's as Carol tried to comfort him.

"Her blood pressure is dangerously high, so I gave her something to bring it down, but if it rises like that again we'll have to deliver." Siddiq explained. "I'll stitch her hand if you'll…" He said nodding to the girl's hand that Daryl was holding tightly.

Daryl grunted his approval and carefully lifted the girl's hand down to the white bed she was laying on top off, instantly staining it with redness. Carol leaned down and kissed the top of his head in comfort, but he instantly pulled away. She knew he didn't like public displays of affection, or most kinds of affection at all, but thought that day might be an exception. However he seemed more disagreeable with it as he roughly jerked away from her and walked back a few steps to lean against the wall.

Maggie was still sniffing as she wiped her face with a tissue Michonne had passed her. The group watched quietly as Siddiq ran a needle through the girl's palm and wrapped it in a bandage when he was done.

"The sedative should wear off in a few hours. She'll be awake in the morning." He said, heading towards the door.

"Wait." Rick ordered from the chair he was sitting on in the opposite corner from the exit of the trailer. "What the hell was that?" He interrogated.

"I…I don't know." Siddiq answered honestly. "Some type of PTSD, a panic attack of some sort maybe, I'm guessing."

"Thank you." Maggie mumbled as he made his way out the door, only for Jesus to appear in again.

Daryl thought back to their earlier conversation in Maggie's office, everything he learned still burned in his mind, although Jesus had not got to finish.

"So what the hell Jesus? Wanna tell us why she just got the crap beat out of her again?" Rick yelled.

"Okay." Jesus sighed. "They called her Mrs. Negan. It's not her real name, but they make fun of her."

"Beth." Maggie spoke, wiping the last of her tears away. "Her name is Beth."

"She was like his general or something I don't know much, but they came here."

Rosita walked in making them all turn to the door as Jesus was interrupted. Tara followed her in and Enid appeared behind the two.

"Sarah's in the pin." Rosita mumbled.

"Who?" Carol asked.

"The woman whose son was murdered by her." Rosita nodded to the girl, hooked up to monitoring machines that continuously beeped.

"We don't know that." Rick interjected, not liking Rosita speaking of the girl he viewed as half a daughter to him.

"Well..." Jesus said.

"See." Rosita rolled her eyes. Daryl expected Maggie to correct her in some way, but she just sat there, still letting her anxiety take over her face.

"You say one more goddamn thing about 'er-" Daryl started as anger built up inside of him.

"Daryl!" Carol warned, harshly stopping him before he did something she knew he would regret.

"Jesus, just tell us what happened." Michonne ordered.

"Wait nah. It ain't right. She gotta tell us." Daryl mumbled. "This ain't right." Daryl stood abruptly from the chair next to Beth's bed. "I gotta go." He grumbled.

"Daryl." Carol said, already seeing the signs of him shutting her and everything else out.

Daryl ignored her, but stopped when he saw Maggie out of the corner of his eyes, looking more distraught and worried than he had ever seen her.

He put his arm on her shoulder as he opened the trailer door. "Yer baby sista's gonna be just fine. We ain't gonna let nothin' happen to 'er. She's 'ere now. All that matta's."

Maggie smiled as she looked up at him, only for him to disappear out the door, slamming it closed again in an angry grumble.

Carol rubbed her forehead in stress, knowing she had to go try and deal with him in a few minutes. "Just go on Jesus." She mumbled.

"No, he's right. We should let Beth tell us. We can just wait to ask in the morning." Maggie spoke up.

"Alright then." Rick nodded in agreement.

Maggie weakly moved across the room to take Daryl's seat next to Beth. Her eyes traced her sister's body, studying the scars and imperfections in a guilty curiosity. _How?_ The word swarmed her mind in a never ending, yet brilliant curiosity.

"I should go after him." Carol said, pushing off the wall she was standing against.

"You should." Rick agreed, knowing if anyone was to talk Daryl it would only be Carol that had a chance of getting through to him.

Carol pushed the door opened letting in the fresh warm air to the small space. She sighed, being engulfed by the darkness as she closed the camper door. Carol shut the door and instantly felt a guilty relief, being away from the stress of one place, only for other fears to take its place.

She walked through the open area, her eyes searching the sleeping bodies outside. Her mind wandered to getting back to Alexandria and the Kingdom, where all the people would have rooms and beds of their own. She thought of her last time in Alexandria, but sadness ran through like and icy blow as she pictured Carl. It had only been a day since she heard the news, but they had all been so consumed with Beth showing up that the reality hardly hit them. She almost thought it was better that way, at least until Negan was gone.

Carol looked around the center of the yard, but Daryl was nowhere in sight. Carol thought about where he was, but then her mind quickly went to what she wanted to say to him when she found him. Carol knew he was going through something and knew she could help him, but she wanted him for her own reasons. Carol herself wanted to be comforted and for a quick second wished it was Daryl searching for her in the middle of some summer night.

Carol walked to the back of the house, thinking it was a pointless effort, but was proven wrong when she found the brutting man sitting by the edged up pantry doors. He leaned against the wall, being hidden by the concrete stump that the two metal doors rested against. Carol approached him slowly as he twirled a blood stained knife around in his hands that were covered in the same dried crimson liquid.

"Hey." Carol said softly. "I've been looking for you." She slowly came up next to him and leaned against the wall that he was sitting against.

Daryl didn't acknowledge her, but kept his eyes on the knife. His mind was consumed with the thought of it as he felt dried residues prickling against his skin. He had Beth's blood on him.

"Why'd you run off?" Carol sat beside him.

Daryl just grunted and shrugged.

"Okay…" She thought for a second about where to go from there. "You know, you can't be feeling guilty when we don't even know what's going on." She came up with a moment later.

Daryl grunted. He only felt the blood on the knife, rusting it from its perfect sterling. Daryl felt the plain handle and remembered Beth trying to stab him. It pained him, not as if he was hurt by it, but seeing her so distraught made his blood boil in ways he couldn't explain. His shirt was still wet with her tears, he still felt her struggling impression against him, and he didn't want his questions to be answered as much as he did.

Carol rubbed his arm, but he was purposely ignoring her. He felt her turn to him and hold his neck in her soft palms, but he pulled back instantly. Daryl wanted her to go, but didn't say so. He held his tongue, hoping she'd leave him soon to be haunted alone with lingering ideas that made him want to bash every wall down until his body refused to push any further. But he couldn't; Daryl sat and held the knife of a girl. That's all he did, that's all he could do, while she struggled in ways he could never understand.

Carol then pushed her lips until Daryl's, feeling the awkwardness, but never enjoying it more. Daryl snapped his head back. "The hell are ya doin?" He yelled, not meaning to hurt her, but being completely in shock at her actions. Carol just shrugged and leaned towards him again.

"Life's too short." She whispered, and Daryl let her stand in front of him for a moment, while his thoughts ran to Beth once more.

He would try to push the thoughts from his mind, only to see his hands and feel her blood. It was all too real and the only person he wanted comfort from, the person who he thought of everytime he needed to comfort himself had just had a psychotic breakdown in his arms. But that's when he realized it.

Beth had been in his arms. He had wanted nothing more in the past two years than to hold her and protect her from every bad thing in the world to the point where he had to say _Beth is dead_ over and over again to remind himself that it was too late; he had failed and she was gone.

But then she wasn't and he was holding her again, but he couldn't fight off anything that had attacked her. She screamed at intangible fears, only reminding Daryl that she had lived on her own and he wasn't there to save her. He had left her, thinking she was dead and gone forever, but then she was standing there. And he couldn't help.

Carol bit into his lips again even after his rejection. He didn't make an effort to push her off until she pulled away, but let his lips stay pressed as she forced hers on him. He felt the knife drop to the ground, out of his grip, just leaving behind the cold feel off the metal in his hand. The silver relived the same trip to the soil ground as it had hours earlier when he had forced Beth to drop it. _Forced Beth_ , the words left a displeasuring emphasis in his head as he thought about it. He had forced her to do something; whether or not he had or choice, the fact was he had still made her drop the knife. He wanted to give her everything she could ever want, but he couldn't turn back time and so he had to force her to do something.

Carol's tongue grazed the inside of his mouth, but he hardly felt it. For a second he closed his eyes and thought of Beth. Not the struggled scarred girl lying sedated a few yards away from him, but the girl who had sang to him, the girl who still had hope when she had nothing else, the girl who had been taken from him and took his hope with her. And with the thought he realized that he didn't want to be kissing Carol, but wanted to sit by Beth's bedside, conscious or sedated, broken or hopeful. He wanted to see her face and be able to watch her as if she had never left him.

Carol pulled off him only to thrust open the steel pantry doors and take a step into the darkness. She felt half silly, sneaking around in the dark with Daryl, but the thought only intrigued her more. Carol squeezed his knuckles with dried scars from his day staining them with her own hand and pulled him into the darkness of the pantry.

Daryl let her lead him a few steps before he snapped his arm back. She had taken the first few steps into the pantry, that him and Maggie had hidden in a few weeks earlier, before he made his protest. He didn't want to hurt Carol, but his mind was consumed in a million other things over sex.

"Nah." He said blankly and stepped back into the moonlight. Carol followed him out only to see he had picked the knife off the dirt ground.

"What Pookie?" She ran her hand on his scruffy chin.

Daryl's thoughts shot back to Beth's hand there hours earlier and it only made his longing for her worsen. He didn't care about kissing her as Carol kissed him, hell the thought hadn't crossed his mind yet from when he had first laid eyes on her, he just wanted to be near Beth.

"Ain't in the mood." He mumbled, suddenly wondering what his brother would say to him in the moment.

"Okay." Carol pushed her hand through his greasy tangled hair once more before taking a few steps away. "You should get some rest Daryl, big day tomorrow."

Daryl smirked at her. "Ya should too." He mumbled.

"I'm gonna check on Maggie and Beth. See you there in a bit?" She asked.

Daryl grunted again and she left him to be engulfed into his torturing tendencies once alone again. Daryl let her return to the camper for a few minutes before he followed in her foot prints.

Carol pushed in the camper again only to find Maggie sleeping with her head against Beth's bed, but her body still in one of the chairs. She smirked and looked to see some of the others had fallen asleep too.

"Daryl okay?" Rick asked.

"Who knows with that man?" Carol smirked. "He will be, we all will be. Always are."

"Hell, we lose so many, and now we finally get one back. Should be celebrating." Michonne half laughed to the room, ignoring the side effects of her comment.

The door busted open a few seconds later and Daryl threw himself down in an empty chair in the corner of the room.

"We'll get some answers in the morning, figure out what we're dealing with." Rick mumbled.

"Finish this with Negan, kill him for whatever he did to her." Michonne added, looking at the girl.

"And for what he did to us." Rosita said.

Rick grunted this time, not responding in words.

And so the group sat or slept in a confused state, not knowing whether to just be grateful or utterly concerned. No one said anything for a few hours as people began drifting off to light sleeps. No one said anything; there was nothing to say until the fuzzy sound from Rick's walkie talkie blared into the room, interrupting the only other sound of light snores and the beeping of a heart monitor representing the effect of two heartbeats.

Rick jerked up in alertness as he reached into his jeans pocket to grip the plastic object with his right hand. He pulled it up as the others watched in anticipation.

"Rick." The voice was quickened with the radio waves and sounded muttered, but it was clear enough at that moment to everyone in the room, sending a feeling of anger or dread deep in their guts.

Maggie lifted her head in shock from a deep sleep, slowly coming into realization of where she was. She looked around quickly to see Daryl sitting next to her with his eyes lifted to Rick. Sweat creased her forehead and she looked down at the blonde girl with the memories of the previous hours rushing back to her as she studied the impression she had left on her sister's arm from leaning against it in her sleep. It took her another few seconds to realize Negan's voice had just stripped the trailer's safety feeling into a tense claustrophobic trap filled of anger and fear.

"Pick up asshole." Negan's voice continued.

Rick stared at the button he knew he would have to press in a few seconds as the first beams of the new day's sunrise beamed into the room. Rosita's eyes narrowed in on him, feeling her blood boil in her veins in an angered sense of helplessness.

Daryl's eyes once more glanced over the blonde girl, watching her stomach rise with every breath and anxiously waiting for her eyelids to break open to the room, so he could prove to himself once more that Beth Greene was alive in front of him.

"You've gone too fucking far this time, you little shit."

* * *

 **So yeah... I decided to try and have Carol somewhat want Daryl romantically, just to add another plot into the story. But this is in no way a Caryl story! Fully Bethly, so don't stop reading if you didn't like that part, because there won't really be any more Caryl support. I hoped you liked it but please leave a review. Sorry for the cliff hanger lol, I just couldn't find another spot to end it.**

 **Thank you!**


	5. Chapter 5

**Hi guys! Thank you all so much for the reviews, followers and favorites on this story. I love reading what you guys think of it and hope you continue to let me know. It really inspires me to keep writing!** **With that said, in case you couldn't tell the _italicized_ parts are flashbacks, and some of the story is meant to be confusing in this aspect. They are meant to be put in at points of the present story somewhat randomly, because their parts of Beth's personal thoughts. **

**This chapter is EXTREMELY dark and may be disturbing. Warning; chapter contains violence and sexual assault. Be advised if you are sensitive to trigger warnings.**

 **Hope you enjoy and let me know what you think. Sorry if it's too much for some people, but I promise happier times in sight for Bethyl after the next few chapters!**

* * *

Chapter 5

"You've gone too fucking far this time, you little shit." Negan's voice scrambled through radio waves in his usual charismatic tone ringing with sarcasm and deceit.

Rick glared around the room once more before finally pressing his thumb down into the emphasized risen button on the walkie talkie. "Negan." Rick said shortly.

"So you can do something right?" Negan sarcastically said.

"What the hell do you want?" Rick asked angrily, suddenly feeling a sense of frustration with the constant annoyance of the heart monitor beep with Beth's deep breathing as if they were mocking his judgement call in the moment.

"What you did Rick, it was a real shitty thing to do." Negan said with his voice still enriched in satire to hide his true feelings on the matter.

"Oh yeah, and what would that be?" Rick asked, feeling the eyes of the now almost fully awakened group with the exception of a still slightly sedated Beth.

"Taking a sick pregnant girl, I mean that is seriously some screwed up shit." Daryl grew angrier with every word that was transmitted to them, forcing himself to tear his eyes from Beth, drugged up and lying helpless after some screwed up shit happened that he blamed Negan for almost as much as himself.

"Beth did not do shit to you and now you endangered the life of her unborn child. I mean, shit, you were a father. You gave me that whole talk about Carl wanting to help people and save the world and all that bullshit, so you go and capture a pregnant girl from her bed where she can receive the medical attention she needs. I mean that was a shitty thing to do, Rick."

Daryl hated him saying her name, they all did. It felt like a dagger to his chest everytime the single syllable came through the small device in a painful blurred sound.

"Beth's safe here. We're not going to hurt her." Rick said sullenly, not wanting to give up any more information than he had to.

"But you see Rick. I'm gonna need you to give me my _wife_ back." Negan's voice sent chills down Maggie's back as she looked back at her sister. _Wife._ The word echoed through the room with tension and anger so consumed that the walls seemed to be closing in to Maggie.

"I mean you get it, she's about to give birth to my child and all, so I am willing to give you a one time offer."

"It's your baby?" Rick said in shock, ignoring the responses from the people around him.

"Yes Rick, it's my baby and my wife. So you can see my aggravation when shitheads like you come by and traumatize the poor girl. Hell, she could be dead already for all I know."

"She's with her sister. We're her family." Rick grumbled, trying to think about how to negotiate with anger rising in him, while thinking about what Negan did to the girl.

"The widow's her sister?" Negan sighed.

"She is. We're taking care of her, she's where she should be."

"Nah, give me that!" Daryl stood and threw himself across the room to Rick only to snatch the object from him in anger. "What the hell did ya do to 'er you piece of shit?" He yelled into the microphone part.

"Is that my one and only Daryl?" They heard the laughter through the radio.

"I'm gonna kill you, you sumabitch! I'm gonna fuckin' kill you for what you did to that lil' gurl." Rick grabbed the walking talkie from his grasp and Daryl grunted in anger, but let him take it.

Maggie let out a pained cry, but tried to force her sobs down her throat, knowing it wasn't the right time. Daryl turned to her, only for his eyes to naturally follow her linked arm up to Beth, who twitched in her sleep slightly.

"What _did_ you do to her?" Rick asked calmer than Daryl, pushing the anger out of his voice.

"Who me? You see Rick, the way I remember it I saved an injured woman, taught her to handle herself and she _wanted_ to marry me. It seems to me that you pricks were the ones to abandon her in some car trunk, surrounded by walkers. Or am I getting my story mixed up? No, that's right, it was Daryl who let her be abducted by nothing, but a few rapists with guns and a doctor. Yeah she told me that too. Rick, don't be stupid here. You could get your family out of this alive, don't risk everything for a woman who's better off without you."

"So that's it, you didn't do anything to her?" Rick reiterated in complete unacceptability.

"That's it. But Rick I'm gonna need my wife back-" Negan was cut off by Rick once more.

"Then explain to me why Beth just had a mental breakdown and we had to sedate her to keep the baby healthy?" Rick grumbled, ignoring Maggie's attempt at silencing her crying.

"Shit." Negan grumbled quietly, sounding like he hadn't meant for his sincerity to translate through. "She had an attack?" He asked, still sounding somewhat earnest, even if the group didn't believe it.

"Something like that." Rick answered.

"Look, Rick, you can't take care of her. You know that, I know that. Just bring her to Alexandria. No bullshit, you can just come and drop her off. I have a Gabriel here that might want to return with you."

"Beth wants to stay here. She's with her family, she's happy." Rick quickly thought about what to do, not realizing the full effect of his decision.

"She's not safe there. She needs doctors, medicine." Negan remarked. "Even trade, Greene for Gabriel."

"She's not going anywhere. She's traumatized, whatever shit she went through she'll deal with here." Rick shot back, assuring his decision with a glance toward Beth and her distraught sister.

"Rick, do what's best for Beth. What if it was Carl or Michonne? I wouldn't pull that shit."

Carl's name sent pain through his body, but he forced the thoughts away. "It's not best for her. This is, you deserve to die for whatever the hell you did to her that left her like this."

"Like this?" Negan questioned.

"That little girl sure as hell been through something horrible."

"She's not a little girl." Negan's voice rang as Beth let out a snoring sound, blocking out the beeping machine for a split second and diverting Maggie's attention. Daryl studied the awake Greene sister, as she made a few soothing motions to the blonde girl.

"Don't you hurt her. You're being stupid Rick!" Negan yelled.

"No you are. She's where she should be." Rick kept the same steady sternness in his voice, his brow wrinkling in frustration.

"Rick!" Negan yelled. "You little shit" He grumbled.

"This'll be over soon. Goodbye Negan."

"You-" Rick pushed the antenna down and the sound waves instantly stopped.

There was complete silence for a moment before Rosita spoke. "So she was one of his whores?" Her voice remarked with resentment.

"Rosita!" Rick yelled.

"If ya say one more-" Daryl started only to be cut off by Maggie.

"Shut the hell up now! Like you haven't done shit you're not proud of to survive. She was a kid, left alone. Abandoned by everyone she loved and look at her now, all screwed up." Maggie's tone softened quickly, but turned stern as she looked from her sister to Rosita still half smirking above her. "So you're gonna shut it with the half ass comments about my sister or else you can get the hell out of Hilltop."

Rosita rolled her eyes before kicking her feet up on the counter to her side in defiance. The group once more turned swiftly with Beth as she averted all of their attention spans with a simple deep breath in some far away trance.

"We should get started, get things ready for tomorrow." Rick said grimly, still reflecting Negan's words.

"He has Gabriel." Tara said in annoyance with Rick and his ignorance of the matter. "We need to get him. He'll hurt him, we need to get him." She repeated.

"Tomorrow we'll end this. We just got to get ready and the whole thing will be over. We'll get him back." Rick said, turning from Beth to Tara in anticipation of a rebuke.

"He'll kill him once he realizes things are going bad. Rick we have to get him back, we have to."

"So what exactly are you suggesting Tara?" Rick turned to her, feeling his eyelids willingness to close with exhaustion, but forcing himself to keep them open.

"He gave us a deal. Gabriel could live through this." Tara reckoned, feeling the heads of every member of the group turn towards her.

"Gabriel _will_ live through this." Rick said.

"No, he won't. You know that Rick. How can you just let him be killed? He trusted you and you're just giving up on him when there's a way to save him." Tara yelled.

"So what you want me to give up Beth?" Rick yelled back, his voice thickening in sarcasm, fully knowing the room was about to erupt in contrasting anger in a matter of seconds.

"Rosita's right, Rick. Gabriel has been with us, and Daryl just drags one of Negan's wives here and suddenly nothing else matters. That's bullshit!" She half yelled.

"Tara-" Rick started, his patience wearing thin.

"No, all of you. You're just putting one of Negan's knocked up wives over Gabriel. He's been with us since-"

"So has she. That's Maggie's sister. She's family. Nobody's going to touch her ever again. Not Negan, not the Saviors and sure as hell not one of us." Rick said strictly.

"You're letting Gabriel be killed for some girl none of you have seen in two years that has been screwing Negan for some food and shelter." Tara argued.

"Beth's not going anywhere." Maggie yelled over her.

"Ain't no one gonna say nothin' more 'bout it." Daryl grumbled, hearing the beeping suddenly increase.

"But-" Tara started.

"Beth's staying! That's it." Maggie said, finally ending Tara's argument. Tara angrily stormed out of the camper, following Rosita's previous motions.

"We all got jobs to do. We have to get ready for tomorrow." Rick said before placing his hand on Maggie's shoulder.

A few hours went by with Beth still sleeping soundly, while Maggie continuously sitting distraughtly by her bedside, neglecting her other duties. Daryl spent most of the morning away from her, preparing guns and plans for the final battle that was planned for the next morning. He wanted nothing more than to go sit with the girl and Maggie, but knew there were important things to be done, and Maggie probably needed her space with her newly found sister. The other members of the group, or at least the remainder of the prison group would drop in the occupied medical trailer from time to time, checking if the girl was awake yet.

It was almost midday when Daryl finally gave in to his cravings and went to the camper. He wished to himself that she was awake, but knew someone would've told him already if she was. Daryl felt the sun beating down on him as his hand found the heated metal doorknob, that burned the outer layer of his skin when he grabbed it. Nevertheless Daryl thrusted the door open, hearing Maggie gasp in the unexpected intrusion with thoughts of plotting people, angry with her decisions from the night before.

Daryl's eyes moved over the room. Maggie's eyes had thick bags under them, as he thought of the night before in dread. Her exhaustion only reminded him of the horrors, causing him to look away from her.

"How's she doin'?" Daryl asked, uncomfortably watching Beth's stomach rise and fall with only occasional movements from her.

Maggie was about to respond when Beth's eyes began to flutter open. She moaned, as she tried to force her eyelids open. Daryl watched the first reminisce of blue become apparent in a silent gratefulness.

"Beth" Maggie called softly.

Daryl moved to the open side of her bed, knowing she was seconds away from being conscious.

"Beth" Maggie called again as squinty eyes opened to their full ability to look up with confusion and fear.

The girl groaned as she turned to see Daryl standing by her side opposite to Maggie. He stayed quiet, not knowing how to communicate with the girl.

"Daryl" She said in a whisper as her eyes closed again briefly before she pushed them open again.

"How ya feelin'?" Daryl's eyes met hers as she allowed her head to fall to its side.

"My head hurts." She mumbled in a sickly whisper as her eyes were barely ajar.

"I'm getting Siddiq. Stay here." Maggie warned before running out the camper door.

"Daryl" Beth mumbled. "Where am I? Is this real?" It was clear to him that her alertness was just coming back to her as she swung her head up, only for the pounding feeling to come back to her with the swift movement.

"Yer at Hilltop. 'S real Beth. Yer safe now." Daryl said to her as his hand pushed curls away from her face.

Beth pushed herself to sit up, only for Daryl to reach over and pull her upper body up against the wall behind her cot. The two turned towards the door when it unexpectedly swung open. As Maggie made her way into the room she revealed Carol and Siddiq behind her.

"Hey Bethy." Carol swooned as she made her way next to Daryl.

Beth anxiously watched Carol walk close to her and felt her bones tense with fear of the prying eyes. Her head pounded as she thought of the hours that made up the previous night, but she remembered the most horrid parts vividly. Carol comfortably found a spot to stand with Daryl and Beth didn't fail to see the kiss she planted on the side of his head. Hurt and confusion went through her body like a stab wound, but her fear took over her as the exam started.

"Hi Beth" Siddiq said calmly as he stood next to Maggie, who was nervously sitting at Beth's bedside like she had been all night.

Beth stayed silent as Siddiq turned off the monitors and relief consumed her without the constant agonizing beeping.

"So how are you feeling Beth?" The man asked.

Beth felt the prying eyes ripping into her, but refused to let her discomfort show. "Okay." She mumbled under her breath as she kept her eyes looking down rather than meet any of the people's gazes around her.

"Do you remember anything from last night?" He asked her with too much cheerfulness in his voice.

"A little" The memory of trying to stab her sister made tears burn the back of her throat, but she refused to let them escape.

"A little, good." Siddiq remarked, but it felt like a mock to Beth. "So what do you remember?"

Beth lifted her eyes to look at Daryl in agony. Rage, shame and fear went through her body as his dark eyes meet hers and she felt as if they were attacking her. "I…I had a dream." Beth started.

"Mhm and what was the dream?" Siddiq asked.

Beth could feel the room's lingering onto her words. She knew they thought this would be the answering to their questions. She knew that they had probably begun to piece parts of it together, but just wanted to refuse them. "It was nothing." Beth concluded. "Just some men…bad men." Beth added, trying to cease their questioning.

"And do you know these men?" Siddiq asked.

Daryl's stare shied away from Beth's as she spoke, not wanting to hear her words, but needing to nonetheless.

"Once" Beth said, mistakenly letting the sadness and insecurity in her voice. She tried to rid her tone of it before she continued, but it was if she no longer had control and her true emotions shone true her. "I knew them once, a long time ago."

"Okay" Siddiq concluded, knowing he wasn't going to get much more out of her at the rate they were going. "Then what happened?"

Beth sighed and continued with a shaky voice. "I...um" Tears filled the rim of her eyes, unfazed by her efforts to stop them from forming. Beth felt Daryl's hand grab hers and hold it tightly. She felt every callous and wrinkle that made up the rough skin on his palm and with it she once more lost the feeling of vulnerability.

"I woke up and didn't remember where I was, but I saw the men everywhere." Beth swallowed the tears deep inside her, but thought carefully about her words. She wanted nothing more than to tell Daryl everything. She wanted to tell him how brutally terrifying it was to feel all of their hands on her body. She wanted to tell him how sorry she was, that she hated the idea of endangering Maggie. She wanted to tell him everything she had done in the past two years and she wanted him to hold her and tell her it didn't matter, but she knew deep inside of her that it did.

"That's all I remember." She lied and snatched her hand away from Daryl.

"Oh, okay." Siddiq nodded.

No one volunteered to tell her the rest of the horrified night and she didn't ask. Beth's mind floated back to the affection between Carol and Daryl, pushing the thoughts of fear away. She couldn't deny that it hurt her although she would never admit it, but it wasn't jealousy she felt. It was something else; something she could hardly recognize until much later. Her thoughts once more scurried when Siddiq spoke again.

"So Beth, can I finish the exam from yesterday?" He asked the girl.

Beth nervously nodded and reached for Daryl's hand once more, only to be disappointed when she didn't find it. She then felt anger at herself for wanting it in the first place and settled for gripping the blanket beneath her in an angry fear.

Daryl's thoughts were consumed with the few words that Beth had managed to get out with Siddiq's questioning. His eyes moved over the girl in agonized confusion and he couldn't think of anything else.

"Can you remove your pants? They can leave if you want." Siddiq remarked.

Beth looked up to Daryl in a desperate plea of wanting, but the message didn't seem to be conveyed to him as Carol grabbed his arm and led him out the door. Beth winced as she turned to Maggie to her side. Maggie's hand caressed hers, but it didn't sooth her at all as Beth awkwardly pulled the grey pair of sweatpants to her knees and Maggie laid a sheet to cover her nakedness. Beth winced when she lifted her knees, preparing for Siddiq's eyes to be laid upon her complete helplessness.

She watched him sit by her open legs and tried to suppress her instincts as she felt Siddiq nearing her. She turned to her side, pushing the tears back through her body rather than letting them fall, half expecting Daryl to be sitting there, although she knew he had already left. Beth felt fear go through her when she couldn't see him next to her.

Siddiq was about to touch her when she yelled out and kicked her legs to get him away from her. She kicked his arm away as tears flooded down her cheeks.

"Stop!" She yelled out. "Don't touch me!" Beth began sobbing.

"O-okay." Siddiq stood back in shock.

"Bethy, it's okay." Maggie grabbed her hand tightly in an effort to calm her. "Nobody's going to hurt you."

Beth turned to her sister feeling the tears burn her skin like acid. Maggie's hand carefully wiped the thick tears from her face and pushed the curls back as Beth's breathing deepened, calming herself.

"You should go." Maggie said to Siddiq.

"Of course" Siddiq said to her, watching in fear of the girl. "Just come get me if you need me." He said.

"Thank you." Maggie said, but kept her eyes on her sister.

Beth's crying subdued into her plain expression again. She laid her head against the pillow and Maggie covered her with the sheet. Maggie carefully soothed her sister as she drifted off to a faraway sleep.

* * *

" _Hey there blondie."_

 _Beth's eyes hazily lifted. The words were something like Daryl would say, but there was something treacherous about the voice that said them. Was she with Daryl? She couldn't remember, in fact she had no idea where she was at the moment._

 _It was sunset by that time she pushed herself off of the steering wheel her arms had crashed against. Her eyes blinked as she looked over the broken windshield of her car. Blood beckoned the corner of her left eye from the opened cut she had on her forehead. Her ears rang louder than they ever had before to the beat of her head pounding, seeming to only increase in pitch as she wondered if this could possibly be death. No, she wasn't dead. She figured that out as soon her stomach ached with what could only be hunger and she felt a shiver pierce through the layer of blankets she had draped around her shoulders._

" _Well hello." A voice called out._

 _She knew the voice, it was familiar in a way that made her uncomfortable before she recognized it as the same one she had heard just moments ago when she finally had forced her eyes open. Beth forced herself to turn, knowing she couldn't just lie there forever. She wanted to, starved, exhausted, perhaps delusional, but she had to fight for herself just for a little longer until she found Daryl and Maggie, or at least that's what she forced herself to believe._

 _Her eyes winced with the golden sun disappearing before her in the horizon. It took her another minute for her eyes to focus on three men. They were talking in the meantime, maybe to each other or maybe to her, it didn't matter. She hadn't heard a single word of it._

" _What's a lil' thin' like yerself doin' out 'ere all alone?" The first man spoke to her, different than the voice she had heard in her semi conscious state._

 _Her eyes studied him first. He was a skinny man, probably somewhere in his early thirties, that stood behind a larger older man who obviously had authority over the three. He wasn't unattractive with defined muscles despite looking like he didn't have any weight on the bones until her eyes zoned in on the swell of his biceps. His brown hair looked freshly cut and his chin was covered in a neatly trimmed beard that looked in all ways clean. Beth pondered his look for a minute before speaking. He was definitely from down south with his accent, maybe even Georgia like her, but something told her that they were very different._

" _I'm not alone." Beth lied. There was a time when Beth would've seen a young girl like herself on television, lie to a big group of guys, but here she was, just trying to ignore the fear building inside of her and trying to mimic what Daryl would say if he was with her. "My friends are on their way." She tried to hide her vulnerability despite being outnumbered and already weakened. There was also a time when_ _her father would've scolded her for lying, but that was definitely not that time._

" _Oh is that right?" This time the man closest to her spoke. He was different than the first man, standing in front of the other two men, showing her his obvious dominance over the two. He sent shudders down Beth's back, despite her efforts to conceal the terror the men reigned on her. It was true she tried to see the best in people, always had, just like her father, but she knew these men weren't ones she wanted to be around. It was something about the way they stood above her or maybe it was just their slow pacing conversation that caused her heart to race inside of her as she forgot about the sting of the ripped open stitches or the pounding of her head._

 _This man specifically there was something that made Beth want to sprint away and never look back. His stomach bulged in front of her in a manner that in another world it would've been considered a beer belly. He was almost bald and probably somewhere in his forties with a whitened teeth grin that seemed like it was trying to convince her of something. In that same different world, Beth thought he could've been a cars salesman or maybe a lawyer. He could've had a wife and maybe a kid or two, maybe he still did. Nevertheless that was a different world, but now he was standing above her, terrorizing the young and inexperienced blonde girl._

" _Yes. I should get back to them." Beth said quickly and gripped her hand around the slit off the car door handle to shut them out, only for the last man to hold it open. He seemed out of place in the situation. A young man, maybe in his twenties, much less than a decade older than Beth. He was handsome with blonde hair that desperately needed to be cut and blue eyes that glistened as much as Beth's in the sight of her. Beth thought he looked like he belonged in college, studying to work with children or maybe be some kind of doctor. No, not a doctor, a male nurse, she decided silently to herself, trying to ignore the fear with silly thoughts. His eyes were locked on her, examining her face and body in a way that made her feel like her skin was poison. At that time she could hardly understand that look in a man, she didn't know how to decipher it._

 _The overweight man closest to her snickered at her failed attempt. "Why would you wanna leave so suddenly?" He grabbed Beth's arm and she struggled to escape his clutch, feeling the fingers press deeper into her skin harshly. Beth had hardly been rough handled in her life, although she liked to believe she understood the new tough world and that she had evolved into it._

" _Don't touch me!" She yelled._

" _Oh honey" The first southern one smirked._

" _Get her out." The leader backed up and let his two subordinates grab her limbs to pull her out of the vehicle. Her hands gripped the bottom of the leathery seat in an effort to stop them as she kicked her legs. Her exhaustion pained her, but she knew that she had to get away. The leather felt cool in her tightly gripped fingers and for a split second she actually thought she could resist them only to feel the hem of her pants loosen as they dragged her out of the vehicle like she was just a walker that had the ability to scream._

" _Let go off me! Stop!" Beth screamed at them as they dragged her across the forest floor._

 _Beth only had her scrub shirt on as she had been wrapped in blankets in her car. The cold air immediately pierced her skin and she shivered, but that was the least of her concerns. What would Daryl do? She thought to herself pointlessly, knowing Daryl would never be in the situation in the first place._

" _Shut her up Greg!" The leader yelled as Beth screamed out._

 _The southern one that had looked the roughest kicked her face, but she only yelled louder. "Don't!" She screamed to him, feeling the mud from his boot meet the fresh blood of her face. "Don't touch me. Let me go!" Beth yelled, starting to realize what they wanted from her. She should've realized it sooner, maybe she had, but just didn't want to think about it._

 _In the moments, Beth was traumatized, but she never expected for it to actually happen. There had been other men who wanted what these ones did, but she always found a way to escape; save herself or be saved. She kept thinking Daryl was going to jump out of the trees and carry her to safety. Hell, she was Beth Greene, a loved little girl, there was no way in hell that some men that just found her knocked out in a car were going to steal her virginity. They messed with the wrong people, she thought to herself, remembering Rick saying the phrase a few times. She'd get out of it, she knew that in the back of her mind somewhere although she screamed, she always did somehow._

 _Greg ripped her shirt open, revealing the black sports bra she had on underneath. The threads itched the definite goosebumps of her bare shoulders, and she lifted her elbow in an effort to use her full force. Beth pushed her knuckles into his defined chin as strongly as she could to get him off of her, but he was hardly fazed. She screamed once more before clenching her jaw onto the thin skin of his hand between his thumb and forefinger, when he reached to stuff the T-shirt in her mouth to shut her up. He jerked back and she felt her mouth fill with flesh and warm blood, a higher temperature than the blood flowing behind her pale skin. She knew she had to get up then, but the dirt staining her bare back seemed to try and hold her down. Nevertheless the girl pushed herself to her feet and lunged forward, not looking around in an effort to dart far from them as quickly as she could._

 _Although it seemed like minutes looking back on what Beth would come to acknowledge as her last moment of freedom, of childhood, it was only a matter of seconds that she took the first step towards a particularly tall oak tree. Pain shuttered through her as an arm hooked her stomach and tossed her on the ground. Tears blurred her vision, but it didn't come as a surprise that it was the southern toned man who had throw her on the ground. Her headache only worsened with the blow, and she was probably concussed. She struggled as much as she possibly could as the man tied her T-shirt in her mouth, wrapping it around the side of her head and over her bandaged ear. The world seemed to shrink around her, so that it was only the four people in the woods, as she struggled for air beneath the latex material of her scrubs tied so tightly in her mouth._

 _She kicked her legs up with her bare back against the plain dirt with evidence of a first snow on it, her head still swirling from the blow and everything else. She felt a wetness near the side of her head and instantly recognized that the stitches on her ear had ripped and blood had leaked through the bandage. With any strength that she still had she tried to hit the other skinny man with loosely held fists as he ripped her bra in half in an effort to grab her. The two sides hung by her shoulders as she tried to stand once more, knowing Daryl would be proud of her when she told him how she escaped by fighting so hard. The leader of the group instantly kicked her and threw her down against the ground. The blood dripping from her nose as she tasted dirt and iron in her mouth only half earned her attention as it became harder to concentrate on any individual pain. She flipped her body over on her back once more, knowing she was covered in dirt on both sides, but wanting to be able to see the men, so she could continue to fight._

" _Fighting will only make it worse blondie." The leader's voice rung out as he squatted down on the ground next to her. His voice was a mixture of high and low tones, that once would've been helpful in a persuasive job. He might have once been called charming, persuasive, someone who could sell anything to anyone, but now… now he was something entirely else. The man in front of was a creation of the new world, he no longer had to flash a smile to get what he wanted._

 _Beth's body heaved in sobs of fear as her breasts hung bear to the open world. She tried to kick him away, but could barely reach him as she felt her legs ache with every other body part. It burned her eyes to look around, but there was no way in hell she'd let herself close them even for a second. She still had to get out of this._

"Jimmy _" The man stayed next to Beth as she shook in place, hearing a name that once had meant something to her in some far away life._

Daryl! Where are you? Come save me. Please somebody help! _Beth's mind screamed at her, but she couldn't speak. There's no way it could happen, she told herself, almost fully believing it. She knew she was too weak to stand again, but she knew there would be a way out of it. She was Beth Greene; happy hopeful Beth, who was somehow always saved._

" _Go see what she has with her." The leader man ordered. "I think it's time we have a little fun." He chuckled, a low hiss of a laughter. It didn't belong to the man he was before the world went to shit, but it like his entire being was just a creation of this world. "God it's been a while." He stroked the blonde hairs around her bald spot and she tried to lift her chest to stand again._

 _Beth turned to him and grabbed the knife from his holster. Her fingers gripped it only for the man to snatch it and bring it away from her. Beth screamed in pain as he maybe accidentally snatched the knife from her, but the end scratched along her inner thigh. She felt the metal press so deeply into her leg that she could've sworn it touched a bone._

" _See what you did now?" The man sighed. "None of that now."_

Daryl, where are you? Someone please! _Beth's mind shut down in shock as he climbed on top of her and held her down. She cried out, feeling the new slash burn with his weight against it, but it was only a muffled cry through her gag. Her face was bright red with excursion and tears. For a split second she didn't feel any pain, but just an overwhelming fear. The second passed and everything burned inside of her as the man ripped her scrub pants off of her. She was trying to scream, but the sound refused to leave her mouth through the makeshift gag._

Daddy! Please. Where are you Daryl? Anyone please! _Beth's mind scurried from her thoughts. She said a final prayer to her father than one to a god, that she forced herself to believe would listen in the moment. He was on top of her, his own jeans pulled down like hers. Nothing could describe the feeling in Beth's body as he lay on top of her. It wasn't anger or fear anymore, but just shock, a whole numbness to everything around her._

 _And then she realized it. She wasn't getting out of it. She wasn't saving herself. No one was coming, it was going to happen. Beth felt him plunge inside of her. She sobbed, but no one was listening. It wasn't a cry of fear or sadness, but it was just instinctual. It's what her body told her to do as she felt a far worse pain than a knife's cut or a bullet. She could feel tinges of blood running down her thighs, and wondered if it was from where the knife had split it open or from her body's unwelcoming of the man. She tried to move her arms to force him out of her, but the limbs refused to move. Everything was lost on her and she shut her eyes, hoping it would be over soon as he thrusted harder into her._

 _It didn't stop Beth from crying, but eventually after she was beaten over and over, she stopped fighting. The leader man was first, then the one she heard was called Greg, then finally the skinny blonde one. The blonde one was the gentlest, but it didn't matter._

 _Nothing mattered. She stopped feeling pain. She stopped feeling anger. She stopped feeling fear. She stopped feeling devastation. She felt nothing; she was nothing._

 _The blonde one lifted off of her and she closed her eyes. She figured that they were done, that they would either shoot her or leave her. Either way Beth decided she was done. She would find a knife somewhere and do what she couldn't all those years ago in her bathroom at the farm. Now she could, she thought she_ _understood life now. There was no more Maggie or Daddy to be disappointed, there was no more Daryl to protect her, there was no more Judith to care for. No one would care if she slit her wrists, no one would even know. She hoped that someone would come along and have the decency to not let her turn, but she figured that no one would find her in time._

 _Beth thought this all through in the moments that the blonde man came across her and pulled himself off of her seconds later._ _She could feel herself trembling and she felt a few last tears run down her cheeks, but she took comfort by telling herself she'd never feel pain again in a few more hours. She wasn't sobbing anymore, but merely a few tears drifted from the rim of her eyes in almost a graceful manner if such a thing existed. Beth had always been graceful, pretty, proud; now she was none of those things or any others._

 _The blonde man climbed off of her. He pulled his jeans up, still panting as Beth shivered, still naked and covered in blood and the substances that she wanted to never feel on her again in the freezing weather. She thought of Daryl, but only anger went through her. She imagined what he'd say or do if he walked over to her in the moment. She figured he'd kill the three men and then swoop her off her feet. Beth could almost feel his hands on her. She could imagine him shutting down on her in guilt and pity. She'd sob to him and he'd hold her. Daryl was not the kind of guy to hold her while she cried, but he'd be consumed with guilt. Beth thought of it, but for the first time, she didn't want it._

 _Daryl hadn't saved her. No one had. After years of a plethora of people protecting her and caring for her, no one had come when she needed them. She didn't want to be coddled ever again and for people to apologize. That was done. Beth was dead even though she hadn't made the cut yet._

" _Thank you." The blonde man mumbled, but it almost sounded sincere like she had given him something by choice._

 _Beth couldn't concentrate her gaze enough to look at him as her body shook in terrified heaves. She could hardly feel the stinging sensation of the wound above her knee that soaked her thigh and the dirt ground with blood, with everything else that burned inside of her. She wanted the man to shoot her, she just wanted it over, but he didn't. Beth managed to spit the gag out of her mouth, but made no more attempts at screaming. She turned her body on its side, pushing the bloodied ear against the dirt to watch the men, fully believing her life would be over in a matter of seconds. Her eyes caught sight of her can of peas, thrown on the ground empty with the top cut open by a knife. The other things that she had collected were in a pile a few feet away, the blankets, flashlight and knife, but she only noticed the broken can. The can that had once told her that nothing was lost and her father was with her, laid broken and empty a few feet from where the girl laid in the same condition. Her body lurched forward and vomit splurged from her lips with a kick to her stomach that she didn't see coming. The two men chuckled above her as Greg stuffed the gag into her mouth again._

 _Greg forced her body down, ignoring the trembles with his touch. His hands forced against her back hard enough to leave bruises. She felt every finger press into her as tears fell down her face. Her bare body was stained in blood from her leg, dirt from the cold forest floor and the painful evidence of what had been done to her. Beth looked up slightly, knowing from experience what would happen in the minutes to follow. She knew the pain she'd feel, she knew the thoughts she'd have, she knew it wasn't over. Her eyes once more fell to the empty can and she had one more final realization before the man plunged into her and she shut her eyes, thinking it made it easier to wait until it was over. There would be no day that she was worse off than this. There would be no time that Maggie would wrap her arms around her and she'd cry into her shoulder. The day she had imagined running into Daryl like she saw in the cheesy romantic comedies she used to spend her time watching, would never come. She had wondered if Daryl felt the same way she did, she wondered what that even was, but she just wanted him to grab her. She imagined so vividly wrapping her legs around him and pulling herself into the oily brown hair, encased by his manly smell… That day would never come._

 _Dirt itched the edge of her nose, but she was powerless to stop it or anything else._ _She could've prayed for death in the instance,_ _if she still believed in a god. She thought of her father, how he had said that the people we love look over us once they're gone, how she thought he was with her ever since she found that fucking can in the car. How could he be looking over her? How could she have been so stupid? There was no god, she was more sure of it than she had been about anything in her entire life and if her father could look over her, he sure as hell wasn't._

 _Then suddenly she heard a voice, not knowing if it was real or if her wish had been granted. The voice rang through her ears louder than her own sobs, the snickers from the men who had already had their turns with her, or the sound of the man who was violating her._

" _Well, what the shit do we have here?" The voice came over the man above her._

 _Her body didn't tremble any less as he pulled out of her as quickly as he could and rolled to the ground next to her panting and frantic to pull his jeans up._

 _Beth lay completing nude and shaking ferociously to two dozen men surrounding her. Fear went through her bones like she had never felt before as her head spun with thoughts of what they were going to do to her. She lifted herself up, feeling the remainder of her bra protect the bare inches of her shoulders from the shuttering cold air, but it took more strength than she contained in her entire body and she vomited on her knees._

" _Negan, it's not-" She recognized the voice of the leader of the group that had each took their turn with her, as she suspected the new men would want to as well._

" _It's not what Dave?" Beth watched a new man approach them, as the other men just stood around watching her tremble uncontrollably, naked in the dirt. The man was handsome with jet black hair, in which the few grey hairs glistened in the complete darkness. Beth's eyes twitched through her tears and sobs as they followed the end of his bat, dripping with thick red blood entwined in the silver barb wire that matched the glow off his hairs. "It sure as hell looks to me like you three should be on your knees right about now."_

 _Beth reached her hand to grab the gag from her mouth with difficulty in getting her limb to function in her terror, as she saw the man she had heard been called Greg flip over on his knees. His pants hung around his waist, showing part of his checkered boxer shorts, as he had apparently not completely recomposed himself. She looked to her other side to see the other two men fall in line with her and Greg, falling on their knees beside her. Beth felt the goosebumps prickle at her bare breasts as she sat defenseless and completely helpless to the man in front of her._

" _Negan-" The leader of the original group started._

" _No!" He yelled in a hollowing yell, enriched with a deep tone of strictness. "Dave, you see that." Beth fearfully watched the man press the blood soaked end of the bat into the man's face who was next to her and push it to face her. Beth looked at the black boots of the terrorizing man directly in front of her, rather than look to her side and look in the eyes of the man who had snatched away her virginity like she was a toy there for his use._

" _No look at her, shithead." He instructed to Dave. The man obliged in fear, feeling the barb wire prick his cheek as it pressed against it only for his blood to just combine with the other crimson liquid that had soiled his chin from the bat. His eyes saw the same thing Negan did, a trembling naked girl in nothing, but a state of complete petrifying terror._

" _You see that Dave," Negan continued. "That is pure terror. That's what I'm going to get from you, because what I see you little shit, is this little girl is terrified because of you."_

" _Negan I-" Beth heard the fear in his voice. For a split second it felt like the smallest amount of relief only for the fear to return in an instance, as the man continued._

" _Oh, Davey. Shouldn't you know not to interrupt me." Negan beamed before walking to the other side of Beth only for his bat to rest on the shoulder of Greg to her side. "I have very simple rules to follow and you guys have so much. Yet you know that we can't allow rape here." Negan bit his lip before increasing his tone to a louder one, terrifying with its sarcasm._

" _So not only do you blatantly disobey me Greg, but you rape a child. A little girl, now that is some screwed up shit. So Jimmy-" Negan turned to the blonde man next to the small group's leader. "What do you think I should do?"_

 _Beth couldn't see the young man trembling as Negan spoke to him. His scruffy blonde hair covered parts of his face, btu Negan could see the pure terror. "See Dave, that's what I wanted." He smirked as the young blonde man tried to cough out a few words, but only burst out in tears._

" _Please! I don't wanna die. Ple-please." He begged._

" _You don't wanna die? Well how the hell do you think she feels?" Negan asked the man in his late twenties. "She's just a kid and you come by and think it's okay to use her just 'cause she can't defend herself?"_

" _I'm sorry." He sobbed out. "They made me do it, I didn't want to."_

 _The words made Beth's stomach turn more than it already was with pure disgust. She hadn't stopped trembling, but she could barely comprehend the scene in front of her. Her head pounded and every inch of her body burned like nothing she had ever felt before._

" _They made you rape her?" Negan said in complete sarcasm at the idiocy._

 _The man was sobbing too much to talk._

" _Negan. Please-" Dave called out._

" _And now we know who goes first." Negan mocked and walked back over to him._

 _Beth only shook harder with Negan closer to her. Her eyes caught onto the knife sticking out of his belt, but they soon moved to the blood dripping bat by his side._

" _Ple-" The man started only for him to stop suddenly._

 _Beth looked up to see why for the first time. Her eyes readjusted seeing the man's head bashed in with his left eye half falling out. Her mouth dropped in horror, and for the moment she forgot her fear. She forgot everything, she just felt relief. Beth watched Negan strike him down again, this time causing him to fall to the dirt next to her, where he had forced himself into her hours earlier. Beth didn't turn away as his head immersed into nothing, but blood and remnants of a man that had once been breathing as the bat became encased in the same parts. Beth looked up to Negan for the first time and knew what she wanted._

 _Beth wanted death, but there was something she wanted more in the moment. She wanted revenge. Beth reached forward as Negan took the last hit at the already decimated man and ripped the knife from his belt. She moved as quickly as she could, not caring as her bare body lurched forward when she swung the knife across Greg's neck. She watched the blood fall from him onto the dirt that he had just forced her against._

 _Beth quickly turned to her left, not thinking of how strange it was that no one stopped her as she lunged for Jimmy. He tried to move from her once he realized what was about to happen, as she watched urine run down his jeans. He could only have been ten years older than her, but she would never have done what the young man had done to her. He was trembling and his eyes locked with hers, before she forced the knife into his gut. Beth was on her knees leaning over him as she watched his eyes contract in pain._

 _Her bones ached and it was hard for her to keep the knife steady, but she fought as hard as she ever had in her life. She watched the life leave his blue eyes, a similar shade to hers before a blackness took over them. Out of the corner of her eyes Beth saw the black boots she was so focused on minutes earlier take a step towards her._

" _I've gotta say I'm impressed." Negan's voice rang out._

 _Beth fell off her knees to feel her bare thighs against the cold dirt once more. She turned quickly with the knife still held upward, facing Negan._

" _That was badass! I mean you've got some serious balls to try something like that, but that-" Negan pointed to the knife facing him._

 _Beth was still shaking although she hardly felt herself tremble. Tears clouded her vision as she thought carefully._

" _The way I see it, you've got three choices." Negan grinned, abandoning his previous sentence. "You can try and stab me, but you probably wouldn't succeed and you'd probably get yourself killed. Remember you're badass, not stupid."_

 _Beth trembled and dropped her gaze._

" _You could use that knife to kill yourself, but that would be a very stupid thing to do, because your last option would be to drop that knife. I'd bring you back with me and let me tell you, you'd have a very good life. Especially after I just saw how badass you actually are. So you have a very important decision to make."_

 _Beth trembled, her arm shook in pain as she struggled to keep the knife held up._

" _So what's it gonna be?" Negan smirked._

 _Beth dropped the knife and fell to the dirt again, too weak to hold herself up. Dirt pressed against her chapped lips as she felt her tears turn the dirt particles to mud. Her shoulder heaved from her sobs and she heard Negan speak again._

" _You just made a very good decision. Let's gets you home." Negan handed his bat to Dwight, who took it and held it carefully in an effort to not stain himself with another man's blood. Negan slowly walked to the young girl whose body had caved in on itself in the dirt. He watched her shoulders tense as she vomited on the floor while he stood above and waited for her to finish before lifting her in his arms._

 _He studied her face, bleeding and bruised like everything else about her, but he couldn't deny the beauty in the entriquette features hidden behind her tears. However, as he felt her shivering against him, his mind didn't concentrate on a sex appeal or the effect he'd have on her as he came to her rescue, but he was a man helping a child, that he planned to take under his wing. She was a child, a hurt injured little girl who had showed him what risks she was willing to take and he was completely intrigued from the second her hands grabbed the knife from his belt._

" _Can someone get her a damn blanket?" Negan yelled to the surrounding men._

 _Instantly some man, unknown to him, ran and grabbed a grey wool blanket from the pile of scavenged supplies that the now deceased men had gathered. Negan grabbed it from him without looking away from the girl as he draped it around her while she lay shivering against him._

" _Let's get you home." Negan held her against him as her sobbing ceased and her exhaustion took over her. Beth shivered one more time before everything went black and she fell into a deep sleep with no interrupting thoughts or dreams, far away from the hell that someone didn't rescue her from until it was too late._

* * *

 **I know... too dark? Please please please let me know what you thought of this chapter and "Loving Ghosts" as a whole. Another really long chapter, do you like this length or is it hard to follow. Should the rest be shorter?**

 **Let me know! Until next time... ;)**


	6. Chapter 6

**Hey guys! Sorry, I** **know this is really late, but I have a lot going on in my personal life right now... anyways I hope you enjoy it! Let me know and please please please leave a review. Thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter, I love hearing what you think about where this is going/ what you think of it. Anyways...**

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Chapter 6

Beth's eyes jutted open in shock. A white ceiling was taunting her from above as her mind worked endlessly to figure out where she was exactly. It wasn't the Sanctuary, she knew that. The atmosphere had a familiar feel, and her mind worked tirelessly to figure out why. _Grady_ , the word shot through her and the memories clouded her mind. Beth's mind raced with a million thoughts as she imagined Dawn about to wake her up to the point that she gripped her wrist expecting to feel the plasma cast encasing it. Confusion made her head ache in her personal sense of darkness that came about with the shutting of her eyes again as she felt the soft plush skin covering her boney wrist.

" _Bethy_ " A voice called out to the right of her bed. She knew that voice, that voice was familiar. That voice felt _warm_. It could've been a memory, it might not even have been real, but for Beth, the simple tone made her crave more of an emotion that once would have resembled happiness. In reality, it was merely the sound of Maggie, playing the role of the concerned over protective sister.

Beth turned her head and felt it pounding as the opposite side of her pillow rose to block half her vision with her head's new position on it. Her eye still hardly opened and stung slightly as she blinked only to form new tears from the pressure of it. Beth looked at Maggie with her bruised face, causing worry to go through her sister as she pondered whether or not she was in pain, but refused to ask.

"Hey Bethy." Maggie spoke softly in a cooing voice, reaching out to push a handful of curls back, but stopping only once she remembered there was no ear to anchor them.

Beth could tell it was still light out and figured it was sometime in the late afternoon, based on the lighting coming in from the window as her memory rushed back to her, the overwhelming joy she had experienced in the last twenty four hours along with the depleting shame she felt when certain moments burned in the hidden chambers of her mind.

"Hey" She said with something that sounded like contentedness or at least calmness in her voice.

"How ya feelin'?" Maggie asked, still speaking as softly and calmly as she could force her voice to be.

Beth lifted her hand, suddenly feeling the stitches across her palm to her swollen face. She felt the tumescent skin surrounding her eyelid and put her hand down in disgust at herself. She wondered where the woman was at the moment, who had partially caused some of the bruises, but didn't want to remind Maggie about the night.

"A lot better." Beth mumbled before lifting her head to rest on the bed rest behind her.

"Good." Maggie sighed. "I'm glad, you had us all scared after last night…" Maggie's voice trailed off, knowing she had reached a boundary by bringing up the unspoken horrors that the previous night had entailed, not to mention Beth's behavior that morning.

"Where's Daryl?" Beth asked, suddenly feeling the need to explain her actions to somebody, but too ashamed to say anything to Maggie. Beth glanced down at her stitches and remembered the sting of the knife sticking into her palm so precisely, sketching a new scar in her skin at a time that she stood awake and alert, but completely ignorant of where she was or who was around. In her mind, she was somewhere she didn't know, with people she knew all too well. Beth thought back to the previous night, remembering how she felt the scar on her thigh burn as if it was ripped open stitch by stitch once more, although it had healed years ago. Thinking back to it, she could almost once more feel the invisible hands grabbing her and running their hands all over her body to the point that she could feel boney fingers pressed against her shoulder so hard to pigment her pale skin with bruises, leaving an impression that would haunt her forever.

"He's just getting ready for tomorrow with everyone else." Maggie's voice snapped her back into reality and she felt the chills of her imagination disappear.

"Oh" Beth mumbled, her mind wondering what question Maggie had just answered of hers, as she had gotten so lost in her imagination, that she had forgot what conversation she was taking part in the previous moments.

"What's tomorrow?" Beth asked.

"We're ending this with Negan. We'll win this." Maggie said confidently until she looked at her sister's grim expression with her eyes darting across the room only to be in the direct glare of the white wall. "Beth?" Maggie wondered if she was even listening.

"Yeah" Beth turned back to her sister. "Right, Negan." Beth nodded as she tried to concentrate on her sister's words, but her mind only seemed to become more hazy the harder she tried to pay attention.

"Maggie" Enid bursted open the door and stepped into the camper, completely interrupting both of their thoughts with her timing.

"What's wrong?" Maggie asked urgently, studying the concern on Enid's face.

"Your office, they won't listen to Jesus. They want to talk to you." The young girl answered, concern outlining the soft innocent look of her face.

Maggie looked down at Beth as she thought, not wanting to leave her sister's bedside. Beth teared her eyes from what looked like nothing to to Maggie and nodded slightly.

"Go." Beth said softly. "I'll be fine." She concluded.

Maggie leaned forward and kissed her sister's head before grabbing her stitched hand, without thinking about whether or not it would hurt her. "I'll be back as soon as I can. I'll go get Carol on the way."

Beth nodded and smiled. "Go, don't worry about me. I'm fine." Beth pulled the sheet up to cover her full baby bump under the white T-shirt, that would have once been comidical for Beth's old body type to wear, but now just looked awkward as her stomach pushed against it and her bare breasts scraped it when she moved.

"Okay." Maggie nodded and agreed sadly before turning out the door with a walk of stubborn reluctance.

Enid's eyes moved over Beth before following Maggie out the door, leaving Beth alone in the camper. Beth sighed, being alone for a few quick moments before she decided she had other things to be doing rather than lying alone. She swung her legs out from under the sheets and realized the grey sweatpants had fallen down to her ankles as her legs hung off the cot. She pushed herself off the bed dressed in plain white sheets, feeling dizzy and nauseous before she grabbed it for stabilization. Beth slowly leaned down to drag up the heavy material pants, that made her sweat in the heat. She took a step forward, almost blushing at the thought of when they were pulled down.

Beth pushed that one of her horrifyingly shamed memories away as she pushed herself through the camper door. She slowly took each step down, scared she'd fall while awkward with her body structure, despite having been pregnant for eight months already. Her eyes moved around the center of the settlement, hoping to get by unnoticed. She leaned her hand against the camper once she made it down in an effort to rid her body of its exhaustion and dizziness, but didn't find relief as an unwelcome voice rang behind her.

"Maggie know you're out?" Rosita approached the girl from behind.

Beth turned as swiftly as she could, with one hand on her bump and the other still against the metal wall that had heated up in the direct line of the sun. She could already feel the sweat forming around her body as the sun seemed to torment her. Rosita gazed over the black eye on the pale skin of the girl, that made her look even more out of place.

"You're gonna tell her?" Beth bit her lip as she asked the woman sarcastically.

Rosita smirked at the girl's humor. To be completely honest, Rosita knew if they had found the girl in any other circumstances she would've liked her a lot. The girl was interesting to Rosita; she liked her confidence and daring personality. Rosita figured if she wasn't knocked up, she would've had some kind of fight to back it up with, despite never having known the girl. But that wasn't the case. Rosita had found her with the Saviors and having tried attacked her, so the only thing she thought of the girl was that she was one of Negan's whores, nothing more.

Beth turned from her, hoping she wouldn't engage anymore in their talk. Her wish was granted, as Rosita walked in the opposite direction towards the back of the house. Beth made her way to the center of the space, in front of the large house that she had been attacked twice in front of over the course of the last day. That, of course, was not how Beth looked at it, despite being knocked down to the dirt twice in twenty four hours.

Beth made her way down to the end of the gate, looking for Daryl, without any clues as to where he'd be. For all she knew he could be out of the gates hunting or something. She knew if anyone from their original group saw her, she'd be sent to lie down immediately, but she wanted to find Daryl. Beth's still bare feet were stained with dust from the ground, but her feet had grown calloused, so she hardly noticed the pebbles and other particles sticking into them as she found her way next to the pin, without realizing it. She turned and looked over Gregory, instantly trying to get away once she felt his eyes fall on her.

Beth took a few steps back from it before she planned on turning, only to bump into someone. She turned her body to apologize, only to find a familiar face, sending anxiety through her body, although she would never let it show as her plain grim expression covered her swollen bruised face.

"I'm sor" Beth studied one of the Saviors that was staying at Hilltop. She couldn't deny that she only vaguely recognized him, as she only partially knew most of the men, despite him seeming to know exactly who she was.

"Greene." A deep voice came out of the forty year old man's mouth. He wore a plain grey T-shirt that didn't do much to hide the fact that he was in shape. Beth studied his widow's peak hairline that started the light brown plethora of hairs that had few greys blended in.

"I-" Beth started only to be interrupted.

"My name is Joe." The man said seemingly randomly, while keeping an angry smolder on his face as he looked at the girl, who was at least a foot shorter than him. "You wouldn't know that though."

"I'm sorry." Beth's voice was soft by her mistake, until she realized who she was talking to and regained her confidence. "I had a lot of people under me." She glared at him strongly, despite not being able to see out of one of her eyes.

"Yeah I figured." His dangerous aroma didn't change as he continued. "You might have known my brother, Arthur. He was sent to the satellite outpost."

"I had a lot of people under me." Beth repeated taking a few steps back around the pin and towards the gate, knowing it was stupid to corner herself.

"Yeah. Negan sent him to Satellite outpost after you shot an arrow through his hand and got half his face burned off." The man only followed her back.

Beth bit her lip and wondered which of the men his brother was. In truth, she didn't know for certain, but a few men's faces flashed before her eyes as she thought of the men that Negan burned on her account.

"You still don't remember, do you?" The man reached out to her once she had backed up against the gate.

Beth remained silent, preparing to either escape or fight him.

"Wow, you really are Negan's favorite psycho." Joe snickered and rolled his eyes at her.

"Don't you call me that." Beth said strongly, still glaring with her one operating eye. "You call me Greene." She commanded.

"Oh Greene- Mrs. Negan, Beth,"Joe called. Beth had never allowed the men to address her on a first name basis, nevermind mock her with ridiculing nicknames. She once had his respect or at least his fear, although the two seemed to become more and more synonymous to her as time went on. "You don't have Negan to save you anymore. Hell, you are living next to an entire civilization that all want you dead and Negan isn't here."

"I don't need Negan." Beth said, fully believing it, even if no one else did.

"Don't you?" Joe snickered. "See how that works out…" Joe's grin put her more on edge as she stood with her back almost touching the gate.

"Well you know, I'm sure Negan would be pretty happy with me for bringing back his favorite psycho."

"I said don't call me that." Beth said calmly, but purposely adding anger to her voice as Joe took one more step closer to her.

"I could bring you to him, get a big reward. Be one of his top guys. 'Sure I'd get a whole shitload of points for that."

"Cause I'm sure Negan would like to hear how you forced me to come with you." Beth said aggressively.

"I could do that. Or I could finally do what I've wanted to for so long."

"What, you wanna kill me?" Beth smirked at him. "I'd like to see you try." Beth knew what she was doing. It's what she had done for years, she made people angry. People wanted to attack her, but she knew she owned them. She knew she was just adding fuel to Joe's fire, but she didn't care.

Joe snickered before lifting his hand to his back, where Beth knew a gun rested in his back pocket. Beth saw it coming before he decided to do it, as she grabbed the knife off his belt and slashed his stomach so he fell to her feet before his hand reached the gun in one fluid movement. She focused on him as he fell against her, covering her in his blood before she pushed him to the dirt, his hands trying to contain the blood spooling from the slash on his stomach. Her eyes could hardly focus on anything except the mixture of blood and dirt that her feet stood above, and nothing felt real except the knife in her hand engraved in a human body.

"No one touches me." She said clear enough for him to hear through his immense fear before slitting his throat so he'd have a quicker death, knowing there was no way to save him from the wound she had opened in him. "I don't need Negan." Beth watched the life leave his eyes as they flipped closed, before her hearing came booming back and she realized it wasn't just her and him alone in the world.

"Beth!" Maggie shrieked, causing Beth to look up and away from the dead man, who she knew would reanimate in a while.

Everyone in the town was just about surrounding her once more. Her eyes moved from person to person, as she still held the knife in her hand, ignoring the wet blood that covered her hands and clothes. She watched the eyes around her, recognizing some, but others were complete strangers to her. Carol had her hand over her mouth in horror, Maggie was crying, Rick just looked dumbfounded, Judith was crying in Michonne's arms. _Judith!_ It was the first time Beth saw the child. She had gotten so old, a toddler, but Beth had to look away as seeing the child threw her mind off.

No one approached her for a minute. She just stood, feeling her back ache from the exercise, as everyone stared in horror. Beth's face was as calm as ever, the same expression that always covered it. If people were talking around her or to her, she couldn't tell. She didn't hear anything for once rather than the dozen voices she expected to start yelling in her mind.

"The hell's wrong with y'all?" Daryl came running down the hill, pass the ten foot radius that had formed from the corpse and Beth, who had leaned against the gate in exhaustion.

"C'mon." He mumbled once he reached her, standing to the right of the dead man's feet as he extended his arm to the girl. He expected her to be trembling or look sickly, but she had never looked calmed. His eyes studied her face before she lifted her gaze to meet his eyes.

"Daryl" She looked up to him as his eyes were swarmed with the blueness of the depth in her open eye.

"C'mon. Let's get ya outta 'ere." Daryl pulled her into him, once more ignoring the stares of everyone as he guided her out from behind the dead body.

Beth felt his hand grab her and instantly felt relief. After all those years of telling herself she'd never let herself be saved again, the feeling of Daryl watching her was the closest thing she had felt to happiness in two years.

Beth had just made it close enough to him that he could reach out to her when as the touch of his palm on her arm brought upon a new reality. He stared at her for a few seconds that seemed to last hours to the two of them before nudging her foreword. Her legs felt numb as it took another minute for her to understand the jester, but Daryl was already searching her face for any recognition. Confused by her plain cold expression, he threw his arms around her back and edge of her knees. Her unwrapped arm found its way naturally around his neck as he grunted and began pushing through the crowd. No one followed them as the group began diplomating their way through the mess she had created.

"I can walk you know." Beth whispered to him, and the realization that She realization that she understood what was going on, hit him hard.

"I know." He mumbled, but made no effort to put her down wanting to get her away from a hostile situation as quickly as possible.

"Daryl." She whispered once they had made it a few feet away from the crowd, who stood in their same spots watching the couple disappear. "You need to stop."

"Huh?" He grumbled aggressively before she pushed out of the arms encasing her so tightly. "The hell ya on about girl?"

"You can't come find me and carry me away." Beth pushed passed him towards the door. "It's too late, I don't want this anymore."

Daryl didn't respond as she seemed to walk somewhat briefly up the flights of stairs to the bedroom she had stayed in the night before. He followed her attentively, wondering what they hell she was talking about. _Then stop needin' me ta girl._ He wanted to yell, but kept his mouth shut, pondering if she even knew what she saying.

She pushed open the dark pine door open of the top floor bedroom open to reveal the sheets and comforter of the bed still crumbled and thrown off the same as it was the night before when she had ran from the room. His eyes studied the individual curls that shaped the side of her face with her open eye, as it moved around the room in curiosity.

For a split second, anxiety showed through her face as her eyes caught the disarray of the bed. A deep breath later any sign of worry was gone, but Daryl couldn't tear his eyes from the pale skin of her face. The way her it seemed to lighten in the light only made her look more, more something Daryl could hardly recognize. Everything one of her intricate features, every realization that came to Daryl with her movements, words, or just the simple silences that he found himself unable to move his eyes from her, just made her more of that

She stood there for that quiet moment, the least of her thoughts being Daryl watching her, as she felt the dried blood itch at her fingers. She took a deep breathe in , trying to relieve herself and forget about the sticky substance that covered her toes, T-shirt and outline of her fingers, but only for those thoughts to be replaced with a million others. The heavy scent of cigarettes, sweat, and some other ingredient she couldn't decide, that made up unmistakeable _Daryl._ The smell engulfed her in a way that made her feel as if the air had been sucked out of the room in a matter of seconds. The simple combination of her sense, shoot a million memories through her mind, but her lungs felt as if they were shriveling in her chest when she had thought of every time she had wanted to just smell it for a second in the last few years. Yet now, she was there with him, and he said that's how it was going to be from then on, but the smell seemed to have changed. Maybe it was the same scent, but it wasn't the same warm ness she had imagined feeling, it felt foreign and maybe unwelcome. It was hazardous, it was more dangerous than anything else. Negan would've said that it was just another threat trying to break her, but it wouldn't; she was _unbreakable._ That's what Negan believed, but everyone seemed to have a different analysis of the girl.

"I'm going to shower." Beth rushed out, when she imagined Daryl was preparing himself to say something to her.

He grunted and looked up to her eyes to catch the illuminating glare of them, filling expecting her to say something else. He was surprised when she didn't and just turned toward the door to the bathroom.

She walked the few steps until she felt the tiles around her unwashed feet and paused to turn back to Daryl. His eyes had followed her apparently and she tried to hid the realization she had just made. Beth had instantly felt more vulnerable without him standing next to her as she replaced her actual sad shameful expression with her forced look again. He stood there with an expression that was almost as emotionless as her own was in the moment and many others.

"I'll be outside." Daryl mumbled, nervously anticipating a response that he didn't get for a moment, as her eyes stayed glued to him, a few feet away from her with the door between the, wide open.

Beth stood in the center of the bathroom for the few seconds as Daryl watched her before she grabbed the edge of the door, not knowing what she was doing. He had started to turn away from her when she spoke again, thinking she was closing the door and shutting him out of whatever shut she was going through alone. .

"Are you mad at me?" Her voice was no more than a whisper as she let her sadness shine through it. The pitch of her voice only emphasized her vulnerability, that she knew she would regret showing later if she thought back to the moment. She hadn't planned to say anything like that, but somehow she couldn't stop the words from flowing through her mouth. Her eyes fell to the metal panels her feet were pressed against as she studied the patterns of the squares and rectangles.

"Nah." He said,while feeling like he was glued to the spot he stood in the bedroom, glooming over the bathroom.

"Is everybody else?" She looked up to him, pushing away the emotion in her voice to be replaced with her empty even tone once more. This felt more familiar, more right, like it was the right voice to use.

"They ain't mad. Just confused." Daryl answered.

"Oh"

"Beth." Daryl paused for a moment, letting the quiet aroma of the four walls add emphasis to his words as she stood there in an unnerving anticipation for some question or statement she knew was coming to agonize her. "What happened to ya?" Daryl knew it probably wasn't the right thing to say, he knew everything he said would probably be wrong. He couldn't figure out how to be around her anymore and the more he tried to figure out, he only found himself more bewildered. Guilt and fear ate at him as the group danced around the subjects for the twenty four hours that a dead girl stood alive as ever next to them, changed in ways they only saw in physical, yet still somehow there seemed to be so many more differences. Every word she spoke made the pain well up in side of him as he yearned for answers that he knew would only pain him more.

Beth looked up to him and her eyes seemed to cloud before she looked at the floor again. "See that's it." She sighed before speaking, her voice never sounding more confident and sure of herself. Beth knew exactly what she was doing. Often Beth did things without thinking about why she was doing them. She didn't necessarily want to do them or need to do them, it was just what she did. But Beth was fully conscious of how she was portraying herself to Daryl in the moment, as she worded every sentence with as much thought and consideration that she could put into an effort despite her impairments. "I decided… that nothing else would happen _to_ me." Beth refused to meet his gaze, so she focused on the elaborate tile pattern that she felt impending on the ends of her toes. "So I did something about it. I get it now." Beth remembered the words she had said to Dawn before trying to stab her. She could have laughed at the sweet irony of her own foolishness, thinking that she understood some deep meaning of life. Beth carefully added pauses and pretended to struggle with the words to add genuinity to an act that wasn't even a complete lie anymore.

Daryl's eyes averted down this time, rather than make eye contact. He still had no answers, and ended up more lost than he had been when he saw Beth standing with Eugene. _Get what?_ He pondered, but couldn't find a voice to say anything. His eyes ignored the dirt edging the sides of her feet with an oval shaped stain of dried blood on the center of her right foot and just watched the swollen shape of the limb wiggle. Beth wondered if her simple answer would just push him back into some tortured corner that would leave him too afraid to ask anything else. She knew she hadn't answered a single question since she had arrived, and she knew her distractions would just leave him more confused. She was doing it on purpose.

"Daryl." Beth said and walked toward him to press her hand against his chin.

The bristles of hairs pricked against her fingers as she felt her stitches itch. Daryl's eyes followed her slim fingers down to her hands, rejecting the outline of the scars on her wrist. Her fingers felt scratchy and slightly dampened with bodily residues, but he only felt the soft skin hidden under layers that he refused to acknowledge. She pushed his chin up so his eyes met hers and they stay in focus with each other for a few silent seconds only interrupted in breathing.

His full attention was pulled into her left eye, the only one accepting him with its look of innocence. He could hardly tell anything about the other side of her face, the one swollen and bruised after the day before, ignoring the features she hated most when she looked at herself. His mind wandered into a million thoughts as the blueness of her eye seemed to rope him further and further into her soul, once more owning everything he had to give. Her eyelid closed for a split second in a blink and he found himself with a feeling of loss once more even with her inches away from him.

"Always look" She whispered to him. Beth's hand found his and she pushed it against her stomach. He looked down feeling the stubborn swell of it against his palm, suddenly feeling all his guilt, pity and discomfort swarm back to him.

"'S Negan's?" Daryl found himself asking as he took a step back from the girl, fully remembering their situation.

Beth sighed and looked at her own baby bump. She felt Daryl's hand withdraw and replaced the center of her stomach with her own. Beth cursed herself for shying away from his eyes with shame and forced her head back up to face him. "Daryl, I…" Beth took a deep gulf of air in before finishing her sentence. For the split second of her simple sentence, she forgot how she was supposed to act and let her brutal truth take over her, resulting in a weakened voice struggling to come out in nothing but a withered whisper. "I don't know."

Daryl ran his hands threw his hair and looked down in stress. He couldn't bring himself to look at her again as she spoke, feeling more shame than he had ever in his life. He knew whatever she had went through was completely on him and he could hardly bare the thought of it as she sat in front of him, just a few feet away in reality and yet she seemed a world away in his mind.

"Probably I guess." Beth shrugged, once more trying to make it seem to him like the words didn't burn her mouth as they left her lips. _It doesn't matter._ "He's saying it's his."

Daryl stayed silent for a long moment, as Beth sat in shame despite doing everything she could to hide her emotion. She bit down hard onto her lip to stop the tears from leaving the rim of her eyes, only for them to dismantle a few seconds later. She swallowed her despair to push it far away from her outer being.

"I'll be right out there." Daryl mumbled to her. "I'll find ya some clothes." He said backing up from her in a moment of discomfort.

Beth felt his rejection burn inside of her and couldn't fight her instincts to stop it. Anger boiled in her blood, but it didn't make sense to her. She couldn't understand herself, much less navigate how to act to him. Beth had thought that she had Daryl figured out, but what she passed as his judgement of her, bewildered her in a furious way. The person she was now wanted to slap him or worse, but there was another part of her that wanted to cave in on herself and cry as soon as she heard the line white door crash against its hinge and she knew that she was alone, and yet there was some echo deep in her mind that she refused to hear. Some slither of the person she once was, called for her to escape her reality and run to Daryl, to be held and comforted like she had wanted two years earlier and she wanted to tell Daryl everything. The piece she kept hidden from everyone including herself wanted acceptance from him, she wanted to go back and be the child she once was, but that was gone; she could never go back. Beth couldn't listen to that part of her, it was just a remnant or something she had forgotten long ago and it had to be pushed away.

She let her instincts take over her and stopped thinking about her every movement. If her whole being was consumed in a part she had played, then she'd allow herself to be that person for good. She wanted to stop feeling and just live without thinking about being or not being someone. The problem was she didn't know how to stop, as she couldn't differentiate between which personality was real and which was the act anymore. It was all the same. Her knees contracted and she pushed to speak as if she had no control. "Wait Daryl." Beth said, her voice just an echo of the emptiness in her mind.

Daryl paused against the door, but still refused to look at her. He knew she was coming towards him as he watched the end of her grey sweatpants edge towards him ending in the pale skin of her ankles. She didn't have a plan, she hardly knew what she was doing as goosebumps pricked her skin in nervousness.

Daryl felt Beth grab his arm in her soft sweaty palm and pull him close to her, further into the room. Beth pushed his hand against her stomach. His eyes met hers in confusion, fighting his instinct to run from the situation when he gripped the soft fabric, feeling the line of thread on the inside as the end of his knuckles touched her bare stomach and the back of his hands was enclosed by hers.

Beth felt the heat of his breaths on her face as his eyes were situated grimly at her waist. He could feel the uneven skin of her hand, pressed on top of his as if he'd run away if she moved it, keeping it on her like something sacred she had to imprison. Beth's eyes looked up to his, not knowing if she wanted them to meet hers or not. Her face ached as she moved her lower lip to its side only to bit onto it in nervousness. Her head pounded and she wondered if it was from the pregnancy, the beating she received or just a normal migraine coming on as they had before Daryl had found her.

Beth finally lifted her hand, thinking his hand would fly back in rejection, but it stayed steadily and intimately on the end of her bump. She once more lifted her hand to grasp at the stray hairs of his chin and lifted his head to look at her face. "Always look." She mumbled.

Daryl heard the words she spoke. He knew he should leave, but he couldn't fight his desire to be next to Beth. She had just walked back into his life a day ago, and he wasn't entirely convinced that she wasn't going to disappear again, but it was more than that. He liked the feel of her hand on his, he liked the feel of her fingers intriguing the skin on his face to feel a longing once the thin hand left it. He even liked the feeling of her swollen stomach in his hand, not because he was in any way happy she was pregnant, but because it was a part of Beth Greene touching him.

Beth couldn't find a thought in her head. She didn't know how she was even acting as every bone felt numb in her body. Every movement came out of instinct and for once she didn't know what she wanted. She was just being there in the right moment for once in her complicated life, she was nowhere, except standing next to Daryl without the slightest insecurity that it wasn't real. It felt real, his hand on her was the only thing that had felt real since she heard the gunshot pierce her ears in the fluorescent hallway that she had stood a few feet away from everyone that she still loved. Her hand moved without a thought to the misplaced curls on her head and she pulled all her hair to her left side, revealing the mutations that she had once hated, but now felt a simple sense of indifference towards.

"You're used to things being ugly right?" Beth said clearly, a smile that somehow looked sad to Daryl took over her face to reveal her teeth, somehow slightly cleaner than when Daryl had seen them last two years prior.

Daryl looked into her eyes again. He couldn't think; she clouded his every thought as his longing for her only increased. He was utterly lost in her words and actions, not knowing how to act or what to say to her. "Ya ain't ugly."

Daryl's hand reached up to her face and he saw the raw nature of her expression. Her eyes were lost in melancholy, her forehead wrinkled as she looked up at him in fear of herself more than him, the ends of her curls were once more scattered around her face.

"Yer beautiful." He said shortly, nothing more, nothing less. Two simple words that Beth fought hard not to trust when they left his mouth. Daryl was still at a loss from words, but he meant the words that left his mouth, more than Beth could ever believe them. He didn't think deeply about them, it wasn't what he did. But for two years Beth would appear in his mind and he would study her image, as if he'd forget it and he'd never forgive himself if he couldn't remember every detail of her. She had died, because of him. He had to remember her, and that's what he did, until he didn't have to remember anymore; she was standing in front of him. Daryl stood in front of Beth, never so confused yet intrigued in his life.

Beth's heart raced as she knew her stone cold expression had melted away. She couldn't tell if she put on her act as she spoke or if she really knew what she was saying. She couldn't tell the difference most of the time anymore. "A lot of men have told me that." Beth knew her words could turn him away, she didn't even know why he was still there. "But the scars are always there."

Daryl felt her hand enclose on his and bring it against her thigh. His eyes followed it down as she pushed it on to the curve of her right thigh. She forced it to feel the indent of her inner thigh before quickly snatching her hand up to below her left ribs. Daryl's hand fell to his side, only to be followed by his gaze.

"Always look." She said to him, knowing he wouldn't understand the meaning of the two words that had rung in her head for years. Every movement she acted on seemed completely graceful coming from her, despite the reality of the youthful awkwardness.

"Always look." She said again, more to herself than Daryl.

Daryl watched her lips open and close, without seeing the split of her upper lip. Her hand grabbed his, but he pulled away. At first Beth thought it was one more rejection until she felt its imprint on the back of her neck. She could feel every finger align the hairs on the back of her shoulders and neck to stand in some emotion she couldn't comprehend. She felt fear, but a different kind that what she had ever felt before as her heart continued to race. She felt his chest press against hers as he leaned down.

Beth pushed into the counter behind her and copied his motion by reached her hand to his neck. She pulled his neck down to come towards her, knowing her hand was just there for a pointless encouragement. Daryl couldn't help, but follow her fluid motions and leaned down close enough to feel her breathing against his lips. The two stayed like that for a second, neither wanting to move, but not knowing why. He didn't know if she was as confused as him, but she seemed as fiercely confident as she had been since he found her. Little did he know that she had never been so lost in her lifetime. A million thoughts tried to break through her mind, but none could as she felt numb, not thinking or listening to the voices in her head.

And then she pressed her lips against his. She felt the chapped lips as she kissed him, unlike she had ever been kissed before. She had never felt the way she did. She wasn't a teenager kissing her high school boyfriend, or she wasn't doing the job she had to do without a second thought. None of this went through her mind of course, all she knew was Daryl was against her; that was all that mattered.

For the minute, Daryl forgot everything he consisted of. He was kissing Beth Greene; he had Beth wrapped around him. Everytime the thought of Beth had tortured him for years in horror that brought along a feeling of guilty pleasure with being able to see her again if only in his thoughts, seemed to be completely abolished. She wasn't the girl that was shot, she wasn't the girl he had rescued, it was just Beth. Simply, yet unexplainably _Beth_.

Daryl felt her hands find the bottom button of his shirt, but he was too consumed with her lips against his to stop it. He felt the button burst open as her hands fumbled to the next button.

Daryl fought every instinct he had in him when he pushed off of her. His shirt hung half off him with only the top button done, revealing the edges of his scars from behind his shoulders. Beth's eyes caught them in her disapproval of his abrupt and unexpected pull back.

"What?" She mumbled and pushed herself to sit on the counter, refusing to let him see how her feet ached with her weight on them for so long. Daryl grunted and took a step away from her.

"You don't want this?" Beth shrugged, as she tried to recognize the act that she put on, while pushing away the thoughts in her head. Daryl just grunted again. "Is it 'cause you're with Carol?" She asked, her southern accent returning for a split second, reminding him of the innocence she once had and somehow still seemed to in certain moments, only for her to hide the remainder of it behind her cold expression and voice by the next time she spoke.

He didn't respond and his eyes hid in shame as she spoke the woman's name. The truth was that Daryl had hardly thought of her since he had seen Beth. Hearing it then only made his mind race more as he fought his instincts to grab Beth again.

"Yeah, I figured that out pretty quickly." She looked down in a true sadness for a second as Daryl saw the confidence flee from her, only for the slightest insecurity to dissolve in front of him into an empty look in her eyes. "Or is that you still look at me like a dead girl?"

Daryl forced himself to avert his eyes, knowing he was falling into her spell. He knew what she was trying to do, he knew she was just playing an act. Yet with every word from her he just found himself more confused, but never more intrigued.

"Or is it," Beth pushed herself off the counter and took a step towards him. "That some things are even too ugly for you, Mr. Dixon?" Her voice lightened its tone as she walked up close enough to feel his breathes against her bare face again. She had liked the feeling, she had wanted it again.

With that he gave in and looked up to her face, to study the intricate features that somehow made up the allusion of beauty. His heart raced as the words slowly left her mouth and he knew that with an act or not, he wanted Beth in ways he could only begin to understand.

"I get it…" Beth whispered, her able eye watching him lean closer to her and knowing she was close to success. She didn't know why she was so determined to get Daryl to kiss her again; to be honest, she didn't know if she even wanted him to. Later she could ponder it, decide if it was her craving someone to tell her no or was it just that the act she had put on had finally consumed her. Later she would figure it out, but in the moment she was going to get Daryl to kiss her.

"I'm pregnant." She said softly in a whisper taking a step back from Daryl.

"My scars." Her hand ran through the tangled curls that covered her ear, only to push them aside. Daryl watched each individual finger sooth the scar of the stitches that had once sewed the remainder of her ear.

"My face." She said as he followed her in her steps backwards, never wanting her more. Her hand ran across her black eye to her split lip.

"Or maybe you never wanted me."

Daryl grabbed the back of her head as he kissed her with everything that he was and everything that he wasn't. She was Beth. He could taste the sweet reminisce of her on the moist lips that were pressed against his. He pushed her back a few steps against the counter, giving in to every thought that made him desire her so invincibly.

She sat on the counter again, as he pushed against her. She had him; his hand on the back of her head, his chest locked with hers, her legs wrapped around his back, feeling the hardness between in his legs. Beth kissed him, but she immediately felt that something was wrong. Or maybe now it was right and before was wrong; she didn't know. The lips forced against hers were no longer distinctively Daryl Dixon's, but they were just eerily familiar. In her mind, she was transported someplace far away. Nothing remained in her mind from Daryl and she was just doing her job. She bit into his lips in a way she had known was sexy, but hardly knew what he it was that she had been wrapped around so contently.

Daryl didn't back away from her as his hands grabbed her thigh. She felt it, slowly hardening the grip, tighter and tighter until it was suffocating. Beth felt the indents of fingers sticking into her skin as she felt the sweat combine with her own in moisture. She felt the scar ache under the hand as if intangible stitches were ripped open, despite the stitches having been removed over a year ago.

She felt her insides burn with a fury and suddenly she didn't feel the kissing anymore. She didn't feel Daryl against her, but she felt every man's hands on her. She felt her skin be ruptured from every hit she had taken, she felt the blood escaping from her stab wounds, she felt a bullet scrape her ear. She felt the knife splitting open her thigh.

Daryl was kissing the girl of his dreams, the girl he had never forgot. He had pictured and imagined the feel of her against him for years and then she was there in an instinct. For the quickening moments, he forgot the guilt, the pain, the worry and the confusion. The only thing that existed in his mind was Beth Greene, and he marveled in the feel of her lips against his and only wanted more of her.

He felt her fascinating him as she intrigued him more and more, and then in an instinct he felt her fluid graceful movements turn to trembles. At first he thought it was an excited nervousness until he felt her pull back for a silent sob to shutter the feel of her body. He pushed off of her instantly to find tears running down her face as she stood in front of him, at least a head below him. In what felt like seconds, she had went from trying to seduce him to kissing him with as much passion as he had ever seen in her, to sobbing. He didn't understand it; the confusion and guilt rushed back to him as he pulled her against his bare chest.

Daryl was in a state of shock and confusion, so his only instinct was to grab her. He pushed the blonde curls against his chest as she shook with a fury that was too similar to the night before except in a way so much worse as he thought she was completely lucid. His chest wettened with her tears as it took a moment of their reality to set in for him and for a plethora of new thoughts sent more pain through him with every heave of the hysterical girl encased in his arms.

 _Fighting will just make it worse blondie._

 _You're beautiful._

 _Please! I don't wanna die. Ple-please._

 _So you have a very important decision to make._

 _Don't touch me!_

 _Daryl!_

 _The boy… him._

 _All the men._

 _I may be nothing, but some whore Dwight, but you're the one taking orders from me. So what does that make you?_

 _I don't need Negan._

 _Those men… they're dead. Your brothers, sons, fathers… boyfriends. They're gone, but here's the thing Cydnie. It took me a while to realize, I know what it's like. It sucks, but that's life now. And soon enough you're gonna realize that you're still here and they're not. I did._

 _I don't cry anymore, Daryl._

 _We all got jobs to do._

 _Daddy!_

 _I know you look at me and you just see another dead girl._

 _Can someone get her a dame blanket?_

 _I wanna learn._

 _I can go, I can still fight._

 _How many are you going to kill?_

 _Kill the strongest. I can go, just let me go._

 _You don't love me, you only think you do. You loved someone once, but I am not that person._

 _Greene-_

 _My name is Joe._

 _Daryl! Daryl help! Daryl!_

 _Beth, Beth._

"Beth, Beth." Daryl called her quietly, resting his head into the head of curls turned into his bare chest. He took a selfish comfort in the feel of her hair against his nose, taking in the sweetest smell he had ever experienced. Beth sobbed with her eyes closed tightly and he held her, completely lost and feeling more guilty with her every tear, yet knowing he never wanted to let go of her.

 _Bethy, did you clean your room?_ Daddy, the voice was as clear as ever. There was darkness as Beth squeezed her eyes as tight as ever, but his voice seemed to send light in her mind.

Beth's eyes swung open, expecting to be standing in her bedroom at the farmhouse, an eight year old girl with her curls tied back in two braids. Shock went through her body as she felt suffocated by a man's arms that she didn't recognize. She had no idea what was going on. The setting of her eight year old self in her bedroom felt more real than being suffocated by some unrecognizable man. For all she knew, this was the hallucination and the farm was real.

Daryl felt Beth go limp in his arms and knew something else was wrong. He pulled back, holding her shoulders in his hand as he pushed her a short distance away from him so she could she him and more importantly he could examine her. Her eyes were down, but he could see the dehydration in her face from the tears that were still running down her chin. Her body was stiff and she was half gasping for air.

 _Don't let them see you like this._ Beth thought to herself, no matter who _they_ were. She forced herself to pick her gaze up, once she felt the rush of air with someone letting go of her. She heaved as she took in the air and tried to pick her head up. Her left eye still couldn't open and her right was blinded in tears, but she forced her pounding head to see who she was defending herself against.

It took her a minute to understand what she was looking at. Her blurred vision studied the deep features of his face before everything came crashing back to her, making the pounding of her head an almost unbearable pain. _Daryl!_ The name bursted in her head.

"Beth!" He yelled and shook her.

She coughed a few times and her understanding flooded through her eyes. "Daryl." She said the name weakly as her migraine progressed and she felt her world spinning faster every second.

Daryl pushed her against his chest again and more tears left her eyes. She didn't know why she was crying, she was mad at herself for doing so, but she couldn't stop herself. Beth couldn't fight the terror in her mind as she thought of the voices she had heard, each sounding more real than the last to the point she wasn't sure if Daryl was even real. This wasn't who she was anymore, she didn't let people comfort her if she cried. She didn't cry to anyone, but herself. But maybe she didn't know who she was anymore.

"I...I need to… to lie down." Beth's stuttering was mumbled against Daryl's chest, but he understood her.

"Mhm." He mumbled and pulled her forward, once more tossing open the white pine door to reveal the still unmade bed. Daryl half dragged her forward, while keeping her against him as she made no attempt to push away. Her head fell against his shoulder in a hazy weakness as he guided her down to the bed.

Daryl carefully laid her down across the golden comforter and carefully dragged her limbs to the center as she moaned. Her eyes were shut, but he knew she was awake as he pulled the blanket around her, wondering if she was already hot but thinking she looked cold.

"Daryl" Her voice whispered. "Don't go anywhere." Her body and clothes still had the man's blood stained across them as she lay in the clean bed, but that was far from both of their thoughts.

"I ain't goin' nowhere, girl." Daryl replied as she drifted off to sleep. "I'm 'ere now."

And he truly meant it, but he was there _now_ to protect her and tuck her in at night. He wasn't there _then_ and that could never be changed, no matter how much either one of them wanted it.

"I'm 'ere now."

* * *

 **Thanks for reading! What did you think? Also, just btw, next chapter will contain a major flashback, so stay tuned. Until next week... ;)**


	7. Chapter 7

**Hello readers! I just wanted to say thank you guys so much for the followers/favs/ reviews. The support has been awesome for this story, and I really want to try and update more often, but things have been so hectic right now. Anyways, I'm going to try and update more often and hopefully I'll have the next chapter out soon.**

 **With that said, I had to cut this chapter in half because it just got way too long. There is a flashback that takes up most of it, so sorry it ends kinda abruptly. The way I've chosen to write this story with the flashbacks kinda randomly throughout it is on purpose, but I hope it's not too confusing? Anyways, this has a time gap between the last flashback, but I'll go back and fill it in. If this seems out of character for Beth, I'll go back and explain it in the other flashbacks, that will be in other chapters.**

 **I hope you enjoy! Lmk! Please please please review!**

Chapter 7

"Enough of this bullshit, we need answers." Maggie slammed her arm down against the pine wood of her desk to emphasis her frustration, as the group watched her.

The exhaustion and stress on her face made her look years older than the twenty-something- year-old she actually was, but it was much the same usually in the members of the rest of the group. Gracie began screaming as she woke up from her sleep with the commotion in the room, but Maggie only looked over at the crying infant and raised her eyebrows at the others to motion for somewhere else to grab the bawling infant. Michonne ultimately pushed off the wall she was leaning off in exhaustion from the day and grabbed the baby girl, silencing her almost immediately. She silently soothed the child to sleep, suddenly wondering who had Judith in the moment.

"We have to deal with ending the Saviors tomorrow, can't we deal with it once we finish that?" Aaron reminded the group that he was still even in the room.

"She just killed a man, she barely knew." Maggie yelled in stress. "That's not my baby sister. She wouldn't do somethin' like that." In her anger or maybe just desperateness, Maggie's southern accent reigned her voice.

"Maggie's right." Rick grumbled, the image of Beth swinging her knife at him burned in his mind painfully. He had never seen that look in her before, the last time he saw the young girl she was a teenage babysitter. He knew she didn't know what she was doing, but he couldn't deny the danger she had posed and that was to the people she knew and once loved. "We at least need to know what we're dealing with."

"She's dangerous." Carol interrupted. Her voice was cold and steady, as she tried to speak without emotion in her voice, because she knew she had to block out the feeling of guilt trying to grab her with the thought of the young girl. Carol loved Beth, she was the hopeful little girl to the group, that had spent her days trying to comfort everybody else, thinking she was wiser than the teenager she was or used to be, at least. Hershel's daughter. Carol thought to herself, but then pushed the thoughts far from her mind to face the cruelly twisted reality they faced in the threat they found in someone they loved. "We can't just ignore the fact that she just killed a man in cold blood. And Maggie?" She looked to the young brunette and motioned with her right hand calmly, but with a hint of some question in her action. "She tried to stab you."

"She didn't know what she was doing." Michonne's face squinched in defense of Beth. Her nostrils flared in anger at the way Carol spoke about someone in their family, that she could put the pieces of a broken story together enough to realize they had abandoned. "She was delusional, it was just a nightmare."

"And today?" Tara spoke. She was standing with Rosita, who was no longer in the interest of talking about the Savior, because everyone just got angered by her comments that she viewed as the only truth in all this. She knew what she saw; a Savior whore. That's all she saw. "She was awake,… conscious, and she sill slit a man's guts open like it was nothing."

"We don't know what happened today." Maggie alerted strongly, as her brow burrowed in the sweat of her face.

"Alden said she didn't even know the man's name." Tara added.

"You don't get to tell us anything Tara." Maggie yelled. "You don't know the first thing about Beth."

"Neither do you, apparently." Rosita finally spoke in a rebellious tone.

Maggie stood and lunged towards Rosita, only to lift her hand to ready herself to slap her, when Rick grabbed her and pulled her off.

"Maggie!" He said strictly. "The hell are you doing?"

The tension only builded in the small office in a moment of silence that was broken when Jesus walked into the room. "Hey." He grumbled in the irony of a simple word to cut the awkwardness out of the situation.

Rick ignored him. "Maggie, I know it's difficult to talk about." He sighed. "But Carol and Tara have good points."

"Rick" Michonne started. "What if it was Carl, huh?" The anger built in her at his name, but this was something else entirely. This was Beth. How could they speak so cruelly about a girl that grew up with them? For some reason she was here, it didn't matter why or how. They were given a second chance with someone they loved that was lost; second chances didn't happen in this world. Michonne watched the grimace take over Rick's face, and knew she had angered him with the hurt of the name. It had felt heavy in her own mouth, but she deemed the words worth it.

"You know that Beth was- is like a daughter to me!" He yelled, forgetting his diplomacy in anger at the woman he loved. "I just want what's best for her-for all of us?" He sighed and rubbed the beads of sweat off his forehead. "But-" The words pained him almost as much as it wounded Michonne and Maggie to hear them."What about Judith?" He looked down at the dirt in his fingernails, fighting the tears in the rim of his eyes at the mention of his son. "She tried to stab Maggie, conscious or not, she put her in danger. If she's with Judith- can you really live with taking that risk?"

"So what, you wanna throw Beth out on her ass when she can hardly stand up on her own?" Michonne yelled back in a voice thick with sarcasm. Rick's words hardly resonated with any of her thoughts of Judith, but merely just fueled the anger in her with images of the doe eyed teenager, who had comforted her at the prison. "Oh no- you'd give her back to Negan to do whatever the hell they did to her to screw her up in the first place?" She was half screaming.

"Michonne-" Rick started, putting his hand out and pushing away his own feelings of anger, overwhelming with the thoughts of Beth and Carl.

"Whatever the hell" Maggie said under her breath, feeling tears drip down her face as she sat on the edge of her desk.

"What?" Rick turned to the eldest Greene sister.

"Whatever the hell they did to her…" She looked up and exposed the room to the tears blurring her vision. "We don't even know."

"Maggie-" Carol started.

"No." Maggie shook her strongly, but stayed completely calm. "We don't know whose baby it is, we don't know how she got here, we don't know what the hell she has to do with Negan." Maggie's tears ceased and her face strengthened with her every word. "We know she slit a man's stomach today." Every word felt like acid in her mouth, but it was what happened; there was no denying it. "We know she had a dream and screamed at us to not touch her. And so we sit here, scared to hear the truth about what the people outside these gates- and maybe even in- did to her. We're terrified to even think of the horrors that were bestowed. To hear how she got knocked up or what forced her to kill that man or the ones the people here say she killed. Hell…god forbid, someone mention that people beat her- or raped her." Maggie half yelled, as she looked deeply into Rick's eyes, but for once wasn't requesting the guidance she knew she probably needed. "We can't even say the words. That's my baby sister, that's Bethy… we called her Bethy and know…" Maggie stopped. "Now here we are… we gotta deal with it."

Silence. What could they say? It was Maggie's sister. Did that give Maggie the decision or numb her from affecting it?

"Maggie's right." Rick said after a minute of the eerie silence. He was half grateful Daryl wasn't in the room, as he knew that Daryl wouldn't have sat quietly and let them speak of Beth, like she was a pawn to fit into their plans. "So, what happened?" He turned to Jesus.

"What do you know about Beth?" Michonne asked.

"I-" Jesus started. "I don't know much, just what we've seen here."

"So tell us what you know." Carol said.

"It's not pretty." He warned.

"Nothing is anymore." Aaron remarked, anxious for answers.

"I don't know the full story, so don't-" he started, but changed courses. "None of us can know what's going on in her head except her. I just know what she did here."

"Stop" Maggie said strictly, regaining her leadership skills. "Just tell us what you know. No more sugar coating. This is our fault, we left her. We need to know."

Jesus sighed. "Okay."

...

 _Beth watched the trucks and cars depart from the open fences of the compound. The leather of her jacket pressed against her arms, giving them a cool icy chill that went through her whole body. She took a deep breath in through her nose, taking in the lurking smell of the rotting reanimated corpses that stood not five feet away from her. The grunted sounds of the prisoners maintaining them rang in her ears louder than someone calling her from behind._

 _"Yo, Greene" Dwight approached her, but her eyes were locked on a specific walker, furthest from her in the yard. His brown hair covered part of his peeling forehead in a way that only reinforced the idea of him being only a teenager before death. She wondered how he ended up there, trying to rack her mind to wonder if she had ever seen him roaming the building. He was dressed in the unwashed sweatsuit, that the other still living workers wore, and she figured that even before death he would have had an odor similar to the others with the weeks without bathing. Still, there was something about him that drew her attention across the yards away that he stood growling in the chains trapping him to the fence, as her eyes studied the rotten eyelids that enclosed around his black eyes, until they recognized the "C" on his shirt. It reminded her of a name she once knew as she wondered what it stood for. Cunt, Beth thought to herself. Corpse, the irony made her smile in the cool breeze of the day that seemed to only worsen the stench of the rotten bodies around her, although she had become accustomed to circumstances as such. The smell wasn't terrifying or unwelcoming, in fact she almost preferred the messiness of the situation, to her own smell of vanilla shampoo and lavender body wash._

 _"Greene" Dwight was standing next to her. Her small frame covered half of his in propositions, but that was not in the least a testament to their situations or strength. Beth's right hand gripped the weld of the knife she had tucked into her jeans, that wrapped tightly around her hip bones._

 _"Greene?" Dwight backed up in question with her hand on a weapon, and he couldn't deny he was slightly afraid of her in the moment. He knew she was as ruthless in an "equal" fight as she was in every other aspect of her life, but he knew even if he was able to manipulate the fight using his size or even his gun, he was a dead man either way if Beth Greene had the urge for an aggressiveness towards him; whether he fought her or fled the fight. Yet he couldn't resist pushing her levels of angst to the extremities that drew a line, knowing he was putting his and maybe Sherry's life in danger, but nevertheless felt an essential need to cause her an unhappiness. He thought Greene liked him for it, the badassness Negan was always talking about, but it could just as easily get him an arrow through his eye or a slit stomach. Or worse, if Greene was actually angered at him about something, an arrow through the eye could seem desirable._

 _"What?" She snapped at him and let her hand fall to the side of her, feeling the material of the tight tank top, that she revealed to him with her unzipped jacket, scratch against the sides of her arms. She vaguely heard her boot crunch against a leaf when she turned and felt a new sense of aggravation go through her, only to add to her anger at the walker and overwhelming excitement for the ending Autumn day._

 _"Negan and Simon are in the car. They're waiting for you to pull out." He remarked, still half scared of her unreadable mood._

 _"Well, they can wait for me then." She said harshly, keeping her share at the walker across from her. "And have someone remove that walker. Stab him and burn the body." She commanded before turning from the scene toward the small green car that she could see Negan staring at her through the windshield with Simon in the passenger seat. Negan grinned at her and waved only for her to smirk back at him in a secret language only he understood. "Well?"_

 _"But why?" He asked._

 _"Do you really think I need to be questioned by you?" She said with the same plain expression returning to her._

 _"No I-"_

 _"Just get it done." She said harshly, staring at Negan deeply as he studied the frame of her. "Like you said, Negan's waiting."_

 _"Yes mam" He replied sarcastically as she began to walk towards the car._

 _"And Dwight" Beth turned back to him as she reached the passenger door of the car and he started to follow her. "If you ever call me mam again, I'll have that tongue out so you'll never kiss that pretty wife of yours again."_

 _Dwight scoffed before walking to the back seat door of the same car on the opposite side, only to watch Greene abuse her power to her next victim._

 _Beth swung the passenger side door open to reveal Simon sitting in the front seat, next to Negan, who was preparing the car to follow the trucks that had just departed._

 _"Get in the back." She said to the man, who was at least twenty five years her senior, but then again who was still alive that was younger than her anymore. Simon raised his eyebrows at the girl, who for once towered above someone, as he sat and she stood next to him._

 _"Greene" He nodded his head in a sarcastic greeting._

 _"Four words. Do I need to repeat them?" She said with the calm coldness in her voice that she almost always had in it. "I don't know about you, but I'm excited about this, so if you're really making me repeat myself. I will not be happy." She tried to mimic Negan's tones to impress him, as he studied the scene to his right._

 _Negan couldn't help, but be intrigued at the raise of her eyebrow and brutality of her simple words. Sometimes he forgot it was an act; he had certainly trained her well. Mrs. Negan, she had certainly earned that name, he thought silently to himself as he watched in delight as she tormented a man twice her size._

 _Beth Greene had become the perfect student, but sometimes even Negan wondered if she had outgrown him. Pure genius worked into every word that came out of her pressed lips, that shared the same hollowing expression that captured her face almost every moment of the day, but didn't contain the simple beauty behind the scars. At times he had to remind himself that there was still a kid under the vicious outer layer, but in the moment he didn't look at her as a kid, nor a student, but something else entirely._

 _"See Beth-" Simon started._

 _"Simon, don't ruin your life over a name and a seat." Beth said clearly, her hand reaching for the edge of her knife again. She had a gun on the other side, but didn't like using it. Negan had only seen the girl hold a gun up to anyone in the months that she had been there a handful of times. The knife, like at first how he had viewed her bow, seemed stupid to him. It wasn't terrifying enough at first glance like a bat or a gun, but he was proven wrong after watching Beth hold it up to man after man in a way that teared them down to their core. "You call me Greene. We're not friends, you don't call me by my first name."_

 _Negan watched the annoyance surge through Simon's expression. Simon hated Greene, Negan knew that. Simon had been Negan's second hand man, maybe he still was, but Simon did not like being told what to do by a little girl. Negan sighed, knowing their conversation couldn't go on for much longer and he sure as hell knew Greene would never back down to Simon, or anyone for that matter, except maybe him when she felt like it. He pondered for a quick second if Beth would be able to take the man. Negan had seen her take larger men, but so did Simon. He knew her technique, he knew when she would reach for her knife and where she'd slash him. Negan came to the conclusion that she probably would be able to adapt to fighting him and would do some unforgivable damage if she didn't kill him, but Negan still didn't want that. There was no point in wasting Simon, because Beth was more aggressive than usual after her morning._

 _"Don't be breaking my heart here Greene." The sarcasm was thickened more with every word from Simon's mouth. "They're waiting. So now I suggest you get in the car and leave the adults alone." Simon knew he had said too much with Negan next to him. But Greene was looking for a fight in the first place, it was up to Negan to stop her._

 _Negan watched Beth's hand tighten on her knife, fully expecting her to lunge it into the man's chest. Beth might've had the men scared of her, but she certainly hadn't inherited Negan's diplomacy._

 _"And that's enough." Negan interjected, before one of his main people could be killed without leaving the gates. "Simon get in the back."_

 _Simon turned to him in angry confusion, as Beth kept her same cold expression, not letting the evidence of winning their argument show in any sort of grin._

 _"Go now or next time I won't save your sorry ass." Negan lifted the bat he had resting across his chest, prickling his jacket. This time Simon obliged and dragged himself outside, letting a growl out at the girl waiting for the seat before he swung the back door open and reluctantly sat next to Dwight._

 _"I had that." Beth angrily grumbled at Negan, as she sat down and Negan handed her Lucille to hold. She ran her hands on the prickling wire, liking the feeling of shock when her index finger was prodded and she watched a slight amount of blood condition one particularly sharp point._

 _Negan smirked charmingly at her and let out a deep manly laugh. "I'm sure you did." He stepped on the gas pedal and the car took off. Beth watched the place she lived in, grow smaller as the hum of the tires boomed in her ears. Someone was talking around her, but she was focused on the truck in front of her, watching the massive tires circle in place for hours._

 _"Greene." Her name brought her back to the car she was in after what seemed like at least two hours to her. "Greene." Dwight said again._

 _For a second, Beth almost apologized for not listening to the question. It was something she used to do, something her Daddy or Maggie would do. They're dead, she told herself to the numb thought. I'm here. "What?" She managed to get out, turning to Negan before Dwight._

 _"How far did you say this place was?" He asked._

 _"Saw the walls about forty minutes from here." She said, watching the familiar town they had passed through, minimize as they became further away._

 _"You have your gun on you?" Negan asked her in a moment of protectiveness or maybe a slight amount of uneasiness after she obviously couldn't pay attention to their conversation._

 _Beth pulled the black handgun from the back of her jeans and placed it in between them. The sound of the clip being released echoed through the car, as Beth tensely showed him the full clip of bullets in anger at his babying of her. She knew he was only worrying that she would do something stupid and get herself killed or worse ruin her reputation, but she didn't like feeling stupid, especially in front of other people._

 _"I won't need it." She argued before putting it in her jeans again for security. "I got my knife. We're only killing one right?"_

 _"We're?" Negan questioned._

 _"We're." Beth said strongly, before pushing messy curls over her bald spot and ear. Negan didn't like that she wore her hair down when she fought, but she only used it to her advantage and he knew it. She was intriguing to any man, maybe not because she was beautiful or because her long blonde curls attracted more attention from being surrounded by hundreds of men dressed in dark colors, but because she looked like she had never killed a walker or man in her life. Sure, she had her scars and a scary grim look on her face, but she knew that her eyes intrigued any man. She used it to trick them, make them want her. She knew men did, but it only seemed to her that the ones who made it obvious seemed to not be around too long._

 _Beth stretched her arms in the car, feeling the coolness of her jacket ride up her arms. She zoned out again in an awake dream that brought her far from the car to thinking about a boy who had asked her out at school. She remembered what a big deal it was to her, that Jimmy was her boyfriend, and now she sat with her hands holding the barb wire of a bat, trying to hide a head shot wound with those pretty blonde curls she used to braid and straighten._

 _It was dark out before they saw the tall gates reflecting the moonlight. Beth stretched and grinned, knowing they had reached their location._

 _"We're here..." Negan's voice rang out beside her._

 _Beth took a deep breath in, thinking of the phrases she would say in a perfected coldness in a matter of minutes. Anxiety spread through her bones, making her want to shiver, but she refused. She knew what she was doing, she had done it before. Beth vowed that she would never let anyone know the nervousness she felt every time she had to do what she did best._

 _"You ready?" Dwight asked from behind the two._

 _"Let's get this show on the road." Negan pulled up the open gates to reveal the open area, lit with the lights of the dozens of cars, that had ruined the grass center. It didn't look like much to Beth, as she studied the faces of the rows of people kneeling in front of their car. She took another deep breath, as he parked the car._

 _"See you out there Negan." Simon jumped out of the car only to be mimicked by Dwight on the other side, leaving Beth and Negan to await the signal that it was time for their entrance._

 _"Are you here?" Negan asked the girl, as he watched the girl's eyes focus in on particular people out of the at least hundred of them kneeling before the car._

 _"When I need to be." She lied. "Wouldn't miss this." She turned to him and accidentally let sadness seep into her eyes, before pushing it away. It wasn't the time; she knew she had messed up, but luckily for her, Negan didn't seem to notice._

 _"So what do you think, any of these pricks good enough to bring back?" He sighed._

 _"Maybe, I could use a new project." Beth said, letting the coolness return to her tone, as she spoke about people as if they were just pones in a game to her._

 _"Is that right?" Negan laughed at her confidence, and he once more questioned their relationship. She was his student, his perfect mimic, but every second he found himself more confused in an act of a girl that he thought he understood completely. He might be the only person to really understand her, so maybe it was less about deciphering her and more about deciphering himself._

 _"But we should see their doctor." Beth reasoned. "We've needed a real one since…" Awkwardness filled the car with memories._

 _"What about the kingdom's doctor?" Negan had already thought most of their medical situation through, but he liked trying to train the girl in politics, despite her hopelessness in the area._

 _"See who's better?" Beth turned to him again after watching Dwight kick a teenager back into place after he tried to break free from his knees._

 _"What about him?" Negan asked, nodding to the young boy. Through the glare of the lights, Beth's eyes blurred, but she could make out the figure enough._

 _"I have to see what we're dealing with first." Beth concluded. "He could've just been trying to run."_

 _"Smart girl." He complimented, although he knew calling her a girl would sting something deep inside of her._

 _"I should be out there, be helpin'" Beth argued._

 _"You'll be there for the fun part." Negan said to the girl, as she watched Dwight near her side of the car and knock on the window._

 _"That I will." Beth pushed open the car door and studied the faces._

 _Some looked terrified, some looked angry, some just confused. Hundreds of different face each with eyes that told a story and scars that meant something, yet were just someone to step on for Beth. Each had families and stories, but that didn't matter anymore. Everybody had some story, but the only thing of any importance was Beth was the person with the knife and Negan with a bat._

 _Beth followed Negan to the center of the rows of people. Her eyes locked with a teenage boy kneeling with his mother, blood dripping down his nose from where Dwight had kicked him._

 _"Are we pissing our pants yet?" Negan laughed. Beth kept her face cold with her eyes on the boy's eyes that watched her intently. He wasn't older than sixteen, a child when the world got screwed up, when the world changed. There was something about him that made it hard to move her concentration from the messy long brown hair of the boy. He reminded her of someone, a boy, who would've been a teenager if he had lived, but he hadn't. No, that's not who it reminded Beth of, or at least that's what she told herself. He looked like the walker she had seen that morning, she forced herself to believe._

 _"You work for me now!" Negan's sarcastic voice rhythm naturally stole attention from everyone, in the way Beth used to practice in the mirror when she was alone. The boy looked at her out of the other surrounding men and women. She figured she looked out of place there. Pretty little girl standing next to the terrorizing men. The young kid probably thought that he was going to do the honorable thing, maybe to be just like his father, he wasn't going to let these animals terrorize his poor mother. So when his eyes set on a helpless pretty girl, he figured what most men did, that Beth was there as nothing but a sex toy for the men surrounding her. The boy probably thought he wanted to rescue the innocent child, who had been through so many tortures. He wasn't the first to think it, nor was he the last to be so wrong. He was terrified for her, he pitied her. Or maybe he just thought she was pretty and liked looking at her like most guys did at first._

" _So Ms. Greene here gets to make the lucky decide." Negan's voice screamed in her ears and she wondered how long she had been standing there, meeting eye contact with the boy._

 _Beth pulled the knife from her built, and traced the spot where her initials were carved into the handle. She felt the eyes on her, trying to decode her cold emotionless face as she stepped forward._

 _"Who's the leader?" Beth turned to Dwight, knowing she would have his full discipline in the moment. It wasn't the time for resentment._

 _"That one, the old man." Dwight pointed to a man dressed in a collared jacket on his knees, completely cowering in his place._

 _"Hmm" Beth smirked, as she made her way towards him. She knew what Negan was doing here, he had told her it was to have the men respect her, but he was testing her. He wanted to know if she made smart decisions or just did whatever she did out of anger._

 _Beth walked to the leader and immediately liked him. He wouldn't lift his eyes to meet hers and kept them burrowed near her waist. She liked the feeling of complete superiority._

 _"What's your name?" She asked, without making him look at her yet._

 _"Gregory" Dwight called to her side._

 _"Did I ask you?" She swiftly turned to Dwight and he bowed his head in an apology or an attempt at one at least. "So Gregory" Beth turned back to the man and lifted the point of her knife to the chin of the man cowering beneath her. She pushed the point to the bottom of his chin and forced him to look up to her face. "Are you scared of me?" She asked._

 _Gregory had the pure look of terror in his eyes. A look that Beth enjoyed, as she pushed her knife to draw the slightest amount of blood from the pink skin of the old man's neck. "I… I…" He tried to speak through his personal fears, but could barely stutter._

 _"You...you" She mimicked his stuttering. It wouldn't be an approach Negan would take , but maybe her originality could still impress him. "You should answer me. You're life or one of theirs depends on it." She knew she wasn't going to kill him, she had decided that as soon as his eyes found the ground by her feet when she stepped out of the car._

 _"Yes." He stuttered out._

 _"Good answer." She agreed. "But you see Negan over there." She pointed to the curious man, watching her with an intensity she had never seen in him before. She wondered if he was afraid she'd screw the whole thing up. "He's trying to see if I'd be a good leader or not. " Gregory's eyes fell to her boots again in pure terror. "Always look Gregory." Beth drew more blood from his neck as she pushed his head up to meet hers. "You need to look, never forget that."_

 _"O-okay." He stumbled out and she could've smiled at the thought of the total fear he felt next to her. It felt so refreshing, so right, he understood it._

 _"Good boy." She remarked, remembering the terror she had once felt and wondering if he or any of them were at that point yet. They will be, she thought to herself in the extremity of excitement and anticipation. "So Gregory, you're the leader of these people?"_

 _"Yes" This time the words sped from his mouth in hopes of pleasing the terrorist._

 _"And you have been for a while?"_

 _"Yes."_

 _"Are you a good leader?"_

 _"I know what my people need."_

 _"Well, you see Greg, can I call you Greg?" Beth questioned him, keeping her cold face on, rather than the grin she contained inside of her. It was an act, of course, but she knew she was doing it so damn well. "Well, Greg, you see, Negan's wrong about me." She remarked._

 _"He is?" Gregory tried to come up with a plan to save himself from the young girl's clutch, regaining part of his composure, after she hadn't attempted to kill him yet._

 _"Oh yes." Beth continued. "He is. I'm not a very good leader, so you can help me. What would you do? Do I kill you or one of them?" She asked. She already had decided of course, but it wasn't just about killing a man, it was about breaking the living ones._

 _Gregory looked down, but quickly lifted his head up again, not wanting to anger the girl. "People need their leader." He said shyly._

 _And that was it. She had her answer, she understood the man. Beth laughed out loud in a malicious giggle, as she turned to Negan, who just nodded his approvement of her plan, that had become obvious to him. Pure genius, he thought to himself while he stood mezmorized in the beauty of the terrorizing adolescent, when she bared her teeth aggressively at the old man. She knew she had cracked him; she knew it would be easy and it was. She knew she had his full ascendancy, it was so easy to read the expression on his face._

 _"Good answer." She sucked in the lower half of her lip unknowingly. "So, you all heard it." She continued, once more mimicking Negan's voice patterns. "We own your sorry asses now. So-" The fun part, as Negan called it, for a second she wasn't sure if he was right. "Who gets to pay the price here?"_

 _Beth walked past the first row of people on their knees. She found a man with blonde hair longer than hers. "Who would you be?" She grinned, studying his reaction to her. He didn't tense and looked more angry than afraid. She debated choosing him or taking him back with her, but then she heard him speak with his usual confidence and decided she didn't want to do either._

 _"Jesus." He answered._

 _Beth scoffed. "That's really what you're going with?" She was happy with the unusualness. It made the night that much more fun and interesting, as she forced herself deeper and deeper into her act that consumed the words that fell from her mouth so naturally. She stopped thinking about what to do and let her instincts take over, as she wondered if this "Jesus" could be broken. Well, all men could be broken, she knew that, but it was more about if he was worth the effort._

 _"It's what my friends call me." His voice was calm and steady. From the stamina he gave off, he could just as easily been meeting a friend for coffee._

 _"Are we friends?" She tickled the ends of his hair with her knife._

 _"We can be." Jesus reasoned pointlessly, already figuring out that at least the girl was psychotic._

 _Beth giggled again, letting her old southern charm tickle into her for a split second of vulnerability. "You know, my Daddy, he used to go to church." The words were numb in her mouth, just a new plot in her role, a new way to dominate and intrigue every man that looked at her. "'Told me Jesus Christ would be the Savior humanity needed." Beth snickered as she ran her hand through her hair, accidentally showing the scars. "Do you think that you're this Savior for us?"_

 _"It's just what they call me." The man on his knees stayed entirely calm. He knew what she was doing, trying to intimidate him. She was smart, a small girl that could get everything she wanted without lifting a finger. She didn't have to kill them, she just had to scare them enough to not kill her. It was strategic; he had figured her out._

 _"I see." Beth's voice glistened in a shyness that she once held. "Well, you see, here's what I think." Beth said confidently, as her knife gripped into the last few inches of his blonde hair. "I'm your Savior." She whispered and grabbed the hair in her hand and pulled it up to her. He made no attempt to stop her. "He's your Savior." Beth pointed to Dwight. "He's our Savior." She pointed to Negan, saying maybe perhaps the first words she actually believed that night. "So, you should probably be thanking us."_

 _"I'm not going to thank you." He said with the same calmness in his voice._

 _Beth grinned, a challenge, she liked it. This was her time to impress Negan and show every man from Sanctuary exactly who she was. She would've prayed in gratitude if she still believed in a god or the ghosts she had once spoke to. "You're not?"_

 _"I know what you're doing, and it won't work with me." He told her straightly, moving his eyes to stare into the blueness of hers. "I know your kind, know your plan. You think you're tough 'cause you got a few scars." He nodded to the thin lines on her cheek and forehead and the etching of the one that her hair didn't completely hide. "I'll tell you now, we'll play by your rules. Give you our shit, but I'm not going to thank you. I promise you that."_

 _Beth hummed a response, as she tightly squeezed the ends of his hair. "I like you. Let's have some fun." She said calmly with a coldness that shone through her uneasy grin. "If you say thank you by the end of this night, I will cut this off." She held up the half of his hair._

 _"Don't seem like much of a game."_

 _She ignored him. "But if you win, and don't say it. I will show you just how many other scars I have." Her voice was heavy with a maturity that only she really understood. She knew what she was saying, but knew there was no chance of it happening. He'd be long dead before she would allow his hands on her body. "Do we have a deal?" She asked with a cunningness, that somehow made Negan even more compelled to grab her and see those scars, despite him trying to deny the raw desire he felt for the young girl. No, woman, he corrected himself in an effort to justify his feelings._

 _Jesus didn't respond, as she let go off the lock of hair and backed up when she heard a defiant voice ring in her ears._

 _"So what yer just a psychotic slut?" The brutish man next to the teenage boy spoke up._

 _Beth hide the hurt of his words and carefully planned her next actions, feeling anger push the blood around her body in a fury. She could feel her heart beating through her ears and Negan saw the tension build just for her to stab through it. Beth walked over to the man in his forties with a mustache and bushy eyebrows. She grinned, as she pushed her knife against his face, and Negan couldn't help but fear for the girl slightly. She had taken bigger, she was protected by a dozen guns pointed at the man's head, but Negan knew Beth was impulsive. She didn't like to win because she was safe, she won because she fought, believing she was invincible. Every time she took a breathe she knew that a bullet could pierce through her head again, but it didn't matter._

 _"That was stupid." Beth said and pressed the knife into the man's wrinkled cheek. "You're going to regret that. It was just so dumb."_

 _"Why? A lil' thin' like ya is gonna get 'er boyfriend to kill me." The man's deep accent instigated a strange feeling in her, too familiar, too triggering. Beth didn't allow the voices in her head to distract her from the man in front of her. She was angry; he had to pay for the pain he had caused deep inside her mind. "Go a fuckin' 'head." He grumbled._

 _"And you just screw more things up for these fine people here." Beth smirked. "But it won't matter now, you should get those last words out."_

 _"Fuck you whore!" He yelled at her._

 _"Greene!" Negan yelled in his most intimidating voice at her, but it was too late. She rammed her knife into the young Asian man to the aggressive man's left and felt her boots sickle in his blood. He fell by her side and her ears shriveled in the sounds of the younger brother's sobs, telling his loved one with an inevitable fatality to stay with him. Beth had known what she was doing precisely, she stabbed him where she had planned to. Maybe he could have survived it, but he was going to die painfully from either the unstoppable bleeding or from Lucille. She had chosen for Negan, she just wanted some of the action._

 _"What?" She asked innocently, taking a few steps back to Negan, before she stopped and squatted by the two Asian brothers. The younger one was sobbing, as the elder held the wound and heaved in painful lunges._

 _"It'll be okay. We're gonna get you better. Someone get Carson!" He yelled._

 _"No." Beth said coldly. "It won't be, but just remember kid. He won't be here, he won't be okay. But you're still here." She whispered delicately, as she twisted the knife in the young man's plaid shirt before walking back to Negan._

 _"I choose." She shrugged, as if she could be picking something to watch on tv. "Go finish him." She nodded towards Lucille._

 _Negan stared at her in shock of the extremity of her thoughts. He knew she had flaws, she let him see them when they were alone, but how could she seem just so perfect? Beth felt empty without her knife, but knew she should wait to retrieve it from the man's abdomen._

 _Negan did, as he was told by the girl. He took in the look of fear and shock that surrounded him, as he struck the man until he was nothing. Beth's eyes once more landed on the teenager, the look of pure horror in his eyes. She had succeeded; she owned them._

 _The boy's mother held onto his arm, as she was in too much shock to cry. Beth's eye's traveled to the confident man, who had called himself Jesus. The confidence seemed to have fled from him and she knew she had won the bet. The tears in the tough man's eyes angered her completely, as the once enraged redneck made it obvious to her that the kid she had killed had meant something to him. She wasn't done yet, she could hardly suppress the anger long enough for Negan to rid the world of whoever the young man had been._

 _"See that!" Negan taunted. "That shit doesn't need to happen again. Hey kid" Negan lifted his bat next to Kal's crying body, that had collapsed in on himself, too afraid or shocked to look at whatever his brother's body was turned into. "Look." He said to him. "You should always look." The kid obeyed out of fear and sobbed, as he watched the blood and his brother's brain and skull matter drip from the barbed wire on the bat._

 _"Told you it was dumb." Beth mouthed to the man across from her in a taunt, wanting to make him feel all the pain in the world that she felt with her painful memories. "Maybe if you had done something. We rode right up to your gates and…" Beth said to him, but more to herself, copying the voice that tortured her mind. It was a voice she craved, but hated like nothing else. If she was alone, she might have screamed at it to leave her alone. For all the voices and hallucinations to just leave her, but she had an impression to keep up._

 _Negan towered over the kid as Beth stood a few feet away from the nearest person. The next moments happened quicker than Negan thought time could ever pass, as the man, who Beth taunted, stood and lunged at her, only stopping to rip the knife from the dead man's stomach. Beth took a step back, but it wasn't quick enough, as he stabbed the knife into her ribs._

 _She gulped, feeling the loss of air and taking in the smell of sweat and cigarettes. Too familiar and infuriating. The pain was shooting through her, before she realized what had happened and she stammered to the grass, gasping for air._

" _Beth!" A shoot fired and the towering man fell behind her with a shot through his forehead. Beth blinked her eyes through the pain, wondering why she was still conscious._

 _"I-I'm o-o-okay." She stuttered out, screaming at herself to not look weak as Negan dropped to his knees beside her._

 _"Get the damn doctor!" Negan yelled._

 _An older looking man was pushed forward by Dwight. He kneeled beside the girl and opened the briefcase someone had thrown beside him. "G-go." Beth managed to get out, as the man pulled the knife from her stomach and she gasped in pain. "Finish it." She told Negan._

 _Negan nodded, pushing away the fearful thoughts that consumed his mind, as he studied the girl lying on the grass. Dwight had his gun to the doctor's head by the time Negan stood again. "She dies, you die." Dwight mumbled to the man, as he pushed a needle through the girl's bare stomach._

 _"If anyone ever, I mean anyone, ever tries to touch Greene here again, I will cut every one of your throats out!" She heard Negan's threatening at times, but her mind was someone entirely else. She knew she wasn't dying, she never was, but she could hear intangible person speaking to her in her own mind._

 _Carl! The realization stung her as her eyes lifted to the starry night above her. For those few minutes, as the doctor stitched her bleeding wound, she was with him. She engulfed him in a hug in the complete darkness. She could almost feel his chest rise with a breath, when everything rushed back to her and she felt her skin burn with the pain of the needle. She swung her head up to see what was going on._

 _"Easy Greene." Dwight cautioned, as the doctor completed his act by wrapping the wound in a bandage._

 _"Ne-gan." She stuttered, still in immense pain._

 _"Negan." Dwight repeated and interrupted the man before he picked his next victim, knowing he understood the urgency in the situation._

 _"Beth." The man dove for her. "Stay with us, we're gonna get you home now." Negan waved to Dwight and put him in charge of finding a way to get her to one of the trucks or cars._

 _"No." She said weekly, feeling her hair push against the grass, as she was too weak to lift it. "The boy- the young one." She said._

 _"What?" Negan asked her in a whisper, not letting Hilltop see his internal weakness._

 _"Bring the boy here and- and my knife." She ordered him._

 _"Dwight." Negan nodded for him to follow her instructions._

 _Within seconds Beth had her knife, spoiled in her own blood, and the boy held down beside her by Simon. She vaguely heard the mother screaming, but could hardly focus enough. The boy look terrified of her. He was no longer thinking he would rescue her._

 _Beth couldn't threaten or scare anyone else. She could barely sit up on her own, as someone pushed her up from behind. Beth looked around at the scared people around her, barely making out any words._

 _"Stop! Let go of my boy!" Simon kicked the mother back into line, as she lunged forward. "Ron!"_

 _"Please don't." She could see Jesus mouthing, either screaming it and she just couldn't hear or him not being able to communicate any sounds out of shock and fear. Either way the next thing was clear from the movement of his lips. "Thank you."_

 _Beth had won; she always did. She was still bleeding slightly, the stitches done quickly and messy, but she was alive, she was there. She could feel her head pounding, before she pushed her knife into the boy's neck and collapsed in on herself into some far away sleep._

 _"You're welcome." The words were lost into the darkness that overtook her body and mind as plunged into some new nightmare._


	8. Chapter 8

**Hello people! I just wanted to say how amazing the feedback for this story has been. It really touches me to hear that people actually enjoy reading what I write, and feel connected to it. I love reading the reviews and even the private messages I've received. Anyways, it has inspired me to keep writing, so I should be updating more often, at least twice a week (I hope). I hope you enjoy this chapter, because I enjoyed writing it.**

Chapter 8

Beth's eyes snapped open in a fury, hearing the mother's screams in her ears even as she stared up to the popcorn ceilings of the bedroom. She didn't recognize where she was, not right away, but she felt the crispy dried blood itching her fingers and her instincts told her to get out from whatever covers sheltered her from some hell she was awoke to. The yelling in her head didn't cease, as she pushed her body up and realized she was panting like a dog, half in a cry and half in anger. Her hand reached down to the waistband of her pants, expecting to feel the familiar coolness of her blade. An emptiness spread through her chest when she didn't feel the welcoming cool metal in her hand and her fists clenched in anger, but with a feeling of uncertainty, as she prepared herself to fight someone with the screams in her head of a woman, whose life Beth had ruined in a matter of seconds without a second thought for at least another year.

"Beth, 'ey, just breathe girl." A deep man's voice reached her, as she ripped the sheets away, that had tangled her legs, in a quick moment of anger and fear.

Beth forced her head up to look at the voice, that she recognized so clearly, yet only viewed as a treacherous hallucination. Her eyes fell upon him and she couldn't move them until the word connected her mind to the sight. _Daryl._

Daryl was slowly walking over to her, still not knowing if she knew where she was or who the man in front of her was. Beth didn't feel the tears flow down her face until they dropped off the bones of her chin onto her neck and shirt. Her legs leaned off the side of the bed and she could feel the wood of the floor try to grasp the skin on the arch of her feet. She leaned back with the bulging stomach causing her to force her weight on one arm, her hair a tangled mess of curls and the blood on her clothes were just one more thing that someone had cared about so deeply, that she had ruined without a thought. Beth felt the warmth of Daryl's fingers on the side of her shoulder shoot through her bones in a manner that showed her he was just as scared of her as she was of herself. The thought was painful, maybe even more than the screams of the woman, who had just lost her world, while living in what seemed like a reality all in the hidden mind of Beth.

Daryl stood directly in front of the indent of the mattress, that Beth created with her weight, his legs ending only centimeters from where her bare toes dangled, encased in a mixture of someone's blood and the reddish dirt he recognized from outside. His fingers creased her shoulder in some act of comfort for lack of knowing what else to do, as he watched the first tears fall from broken eyes that lifted to meet his. Daryl would never have seen himself comforting a crying woman, in any other case he would've darted from the room as quickly as he could. But this, this was different. He wasn't being the pussy his brother would've viewed him as. He forgot the word, he forgot everything. He didn't care about the things he normally hated about woman, the crying and the confusion. He didn't think that he just wanted to get away from an emotional woman, but he only wanted to make her stop crying. It was a feeling of helplessness, that he had never felt so hollowingly, as he did watching the tears once more wet the dried stains of a T-shirt, that he had seen yet one more person that he loved and failed wear. Everything about the situation was unnatural and foreign to Daryl, but he didn't want to be anywhere else.

Beth reached her untied arm out in front of her only to grasp Daryl's back and pull him close enough so her head could lean against his stomach. He was led willingly and grabbed the head of curls in his palm, while resting his other arm tightly around her back. Beth felt the solid form against her, and she could never deny the stability and relief that she had craved for years and felt as Daryl Dixon held her in his arms. And she cried against him, she heaved and sobbed and let his stomach rise with deep breaths.

Daryl felt stiff and awkward, feeling the tears fall from her in a deep pain, but he held her as tightly as he could, filling the role of the only stable thing in her life, as her world spun violently around her. He didn't know what to say, he tried shushing her, but it only made him feel more awkward. The meaning behind each tear or sob was long lost on him and maybe even her, but he held her for as long as she needed it.

Beth thought about what a horrible piece of shit person she really was for letting him comfort her, but it only made her cry harder. And soon she stopped sobbing with self hatred, but cried with Daryl's arms around her like they should've been all those years ago when she was naked and helpless on the forest ground, covered in blood and the evidence of what the men had done to her. She cried to him for when she woke up at Grady completely abandoned and alone in the world, yet not even understanding that same world. She cried to escape the guilt of the voices screaming at her for what she did. She cried because she could never escape them. She cried like the mother cried and she cried for every person she killed, but more for the ones she left living. She cried, because she was crying to Daryl and she cried because she had to wonder if it was too late to cry.

With every sob that took over the girl's body, Daryl just grabbed her tighter. He stayed quiet other than the occasional time he whispered her name to her, although she did not seem to notice. So there he stood with a crying girl wrapped in his arms and for every instinct in his body to say run, something else made his feet stay in place. He was there for her in a way no one had ever been for him. He may not have been able to save her then and maybe it was too late to come back from whatever hell he had found her in, but he could hold her and tell her it was okay. And maybe if he said it enough, she'd start to believe it.

Daryl felt Beth's delicate fingers press against his chest and he held the still crying girl a few inches in front of him. Through dehydrated skin and tear blurred vision, her eyes reached his and she wanted to say something, anything, but no words would come to the rusty dry feeling of her mouth.

Her shoulders heaved in a last sob, as she tried to compose herself once more, although she knew it was pointless. She could feel his eyes stirring something deep in her gut and she had never felt so vulnerable and bare, yet salvaged from every internal torture. Her head pounded to the rhythm of the ringing of her ears and she was too sickly to move, as her stomach gave out, spulgering vomit from her shriveling lips. Beth lifted a shaky hand to her cheek and wiped off the residue, her nostrils flaring with the pungent smell. Her eyes once more lifted to Daryl's only to find his intensive state hadn't moved from her, as she felt a rush of shame and guilt burn her eyes at the thought of what she looked like to him.

 _Yer heavier than you look._ Words burned in her mind like a sickness overcoming her body and she felt more tears streaming down her face. Daryl's eyes gripped her and refused to budge as her body lurched forward and she vomited again through an aggressive sob. One hand grabbed the already soiled golden curls that crept around her sweaty neck, while he placed his other on her back. She lifted her head towards him again and her eyes fled to divert when they met his.

"I'm sorry." She mumbled, as her tears began to slow into a silent weep and no sobs followed, but the bare hateful feeling refused to leave.

"Nah." Daryl grunted and pulled her against his chest, feeling in part like he was healed from every pain he had ever felt with Beth in his arms, but in another never so useless and helpless, as the one person he needed in his life was sobbing from every pain she had endured that he could have stopped, and didn't. "Yer safe now." He whispered to the girl, who was taking salvation in the scrunched up ruffles of some worn out T-shirt he wore, only for her to realize how much he didn't understand.

"Daryl." She whispered the name like a secret that no one else could hear, something she had kept hidden for those moments she found herself alone and needing stabilization, only she wasn't alone now. Her lips could taste the cotton pressed against it, along with a slight taste of blood and her own sickness pressed on the edges of her mouth, worsening the dryness.

"I ain't goin' nowhere." He murmured into the blonde curls, that he knew hid the scars of her struggle, her wildness, her strength that she finally discovered, lurking beneath the pretty blue eyes that contained so much more than innocence and hope now.

Beth complentated that for a split second, as the air suddenly seemed to rush into her lungs for once, rather than it leaving her to feel suffocated. Nobody had hugged her for a long time. She tried to think of the last time someone encased her in their arms, her mind swarming with memories of Maggie and her father. She remembered hugging Dr. Edwards, and was so engaged in the memory for a split second, that she moved back a step from Daryl to scratch at the invisible itch of his lab coat scraping her back.

 _I ain't goin' nowhere._ Those words brought her back, and she allowed herself to pretend they were the truth. She knew she couldn't hold them against him, when he didn't have the full truth. Still, she wished more than anything that they were, and maybe they would be. She knew she had already scared Maggie off, before she even tried to explain, but Daryl was different. She didn't know what he was in reality, but when she had nothing, when she _was_ nothing, he had been a hope. His voice had been engraved deeply in her head to use as a rescue when she needed it. Maybe that's all he was, someone she pretended to care for her, about her, when no one else did. He was someone that would have took care of her, when everyone she knew either wanted to kill her for what she did or use her like the men in the woods had. But he could no longer be a pleasurable daydream; he was real, and she had no idea what to do with that.

"Beth" His voice hissed with a softness, that made more tears well in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall.

Her eyes lifted to his a final time, still seeming to make every cell in her body shrivel. His voice pushed her mind back to where she was, with a kick from the baby girl inside of her. It was easy to forget some days, that she only had a few more weeks of her life, as every day brought more uncertainty. Her palm reached down to the center of her bump without breaking her stare with Daryl, as she rubbed her hand in a comforting circle. In truth she liked the simple reminders that the baby was still alive, she wanted to have it healthy. It was the one thing she needed to do right in her fucked up life in the world of shit.

" _The world doesn't have to be shit for her."_ The voice went through her with a stabbing pain and she had never been so grateful for Daryl to grab her hand.

"C'mon." He mumbled once he knew she was slightly calmer or at least not sobbing. She allowed him to pull her softly to the bathroom once more and fill the small tub with lukewarm water. His hand guided her to sit against the counter and her eyes drifted to the mirror, reminding her that blood and vomit still lined the traces of her body in a guilty embarrassment.

The running water rang in her head loudly, blocking out most of her other thoughts as she put her hands against the wood to steady herself with a new wave of nausea. Daryl didn't seem to notice as he stood behind her again, his hands drifting to her elbows and letting out an encouraging grunt for her to turn towards him. She had never felt like more of a helpless child, as she did when his hand grazed the bottom of her T-shirt, and he waited for a nod of approval from her to lift it and reveal her bare breasts, hanging above the swell of her stomach. Without the brace of her elbow, her arm rested heavily on her bump, and a new wave of an emotion she could hardly recognize went through her like a raging fire, as Daryl's eyes avoided her completely to find the square panels of the floor to steady himself. Beth's hand found the hem of her pants and she let them fall the rest of the way to her ankles, after she dragged them to the rough skin of her knees. Daryl turned completely from her, as she took a deep breath through her dry mouth in her full nakedness with the fall of a delicate pair of panties.

His eyes stayed on the floor, as she felt his hand tap hers lightly and nudge her forward, towards the tub. She obeyed silently grabbing onto his shoulder in a quick moment of fear, when she felt her body weakening and her knees feeling ready to buckle. His arm reached around the side of her spine to the scar under her ribs, that she usually guarded beneath the layers of clothing she wore, and he guided her the last step until he lowered her to the pit of water.

It wasn't warm enough for her liking, and she could hardly concentrate on the layers of her filth, melting away as her thoughts aganzied her with a memory. Daryl stayed silent, as she pulled her legs as near to her chest as she could and pressed her head against them. He would have been able to tell if she was sobbing, but she stayed still with single tears hidden beneath her arms. His eyes moved over her sheltering body, as he washed the skin clinging to her back with a yellow face cloth. The ends of his shirt wettened with his attempt of cleaning the girl, knowing some scars could never disappear completely. She didn't acknowledge him at all when he stepped back and pulled off the black shirt to reveal a white tank top underneath. He returned to the girl seconds later to wet the curls on her head.

Pain contracted in his stomach, as his eyes found what was left of her ear from the scar that he hated. It didn't make her any less beautiful in his eyes, but it was just one more pain he couldn't save her from. He was so lost in this thought, that he hardly noticed when exactly she had lifted her head and pushed her legs down, to reveal her full nakedness to him. His eyes moved over her in a glance of an emotion neither could recognize. He knew she was beautiful, so _damn beautiful,_ at least to him. But when he looked at her in the moment he didn't crave her in ways he had earlier, and he didn't pity her like the crying child she was to everyone else. It wasn't guilt, at least not fully, but something else entirely. He, of course, hated seeing her like _that_ , but there was another small part of him that was just happy to be there for her when she needed it for once, even if he wasn't the hundred other times she wanted him.

"Daryl" Her voice was a drained whisper with barely enough life in it to a form full soft toned word.

"I'm 'ere." He said back, still in the soft tone he had hardly ever used in his lifetime, but somehow always around her. "I ain't goin' nowhere. Not now, not ever." He said, thinking it was what she needed to hear, that she was never going to be abandoned again. At the start of that day it was what he needed, although he would never admit it, he needed to know she wouldn't leave him ever again, so he figured she would want the same, but failed to think of what she was actually feeling. He knew he would probably never fully understand her, he saw it in the lost look of eyes that tortured him more than her own internal agony, but he was damn sure going to try.

"I don't know what's real and what's not anymore." She whispered as singular tears ran down each cheek, making the scar on her cheek glisten in moisture.

Daryl grunted in a moment of thought. He wasn't the guy to say the things to make her better, to fix her, hell, he wasn't sure that there was a guy to fix Beth like she was before. He knew she was different, changed in horrors that hurt to think about, but it was still Beth Greene sitting in front of him with walls buried deep inside of her, that she used to block everyone out. But yet she was sitting in front of him shriveled in on herself in a complete state of vulnerability and trust. He knew Maggie or someone else could tell her the things she needed to hear, but she was there with him, needing a cure to something wrong, that he didn't know where to begin in navigating.

"Then I'll tell ya." He said quietly, pushing wet hairs away from her face and feeling the indent of the scar under his forefinger. It should have made him uncomfortable, made him wince with displeasure or agony, but he liked the feel of the scar. Every scar on her, although dominated with his guilt, was still a part of Beth Greene and he could never wish they weren't there. "I'll remind ya 'til ya remember."

"I don't know _who_ I am anymore." This time Beth turned her face towards him and he saw the sadness lurking in each word.

His hand dropped back to his side and he felt her eyes against him, wondering what he could possibly think of her. "I knew who I was before-" Her hand traced the scar of her forehead back to where her ear should start before she snapped it down to the water, causing droplets to splash at the side of the tub. "Before…" She concluded, knowing he knew exactly what she meant. "And then I knew after that. I could be the new me." She whispered, more to herself than him. "The me this world created."

"Beth-" Daryl started, but she cut him off, and he was too lost in finding the meaning behind her words to push against her will.

"But now I'm here, and y'all are tellin' me you're so happy to see me. And it's a miracle and everything else..." Her eyes rolled in a sarcasm.

"Beth-"

"But you don't even know who I am anymore." She stopped and turned back to him with a confidence flooding back into her eyes. Maybe not a confidence, but a calm fierceness, that had been in her eyes when she had stood above her murder victim.

"It don't matter." Daryl told her, never meaning any words more. "Yer 'ere now. We can take care of ya. Just let us, all ya gotta do."

The words were so convincing to Beth. It was what she had wanted to hear for years, but at what point did they lose their meaning. "I'm sorry, I wasn't there then, but I'm 'ere now. And I ain't goin' anywhere, like I said."

Every word felt warmer in Beth's inside although the water had started to cool. She wanted to believe them, she had never wanted anything more, but a voice screamed in her head to snap out of it and she listened.

"How many walkers have you killed?" Despair still clung to every syllable, but Daryl could see through the tough act she was trying to make overcome her bare emotions.

"What?" He asked, not wanting to deny the girl, but feeling at a loss of words in her rejection of his own statements.

"How many walkers?" She said, a slight amount of sarcasm replacing a part of her sadness.

"A lot. I dunno." Daryl himself had never answered the questions out loud, although he knew exactly what she was doing, despite not knowing why.

"How many people?"

"A lot." He said again, truly not knowing the actual number.

"Why?" The single word chilled her to the bone.

"Ta survive." He answered honestly, not bothering to come up with a better answer.

There was a moment of silence and Beth tried to suppress the tears that wanted to burst from her, as she spoke. Her voice was still heavy in sadness, but she refused to let a single tear fall from the filled rim of her eyes.

"I don't know how many walkers." She said clearly, her eyes glistening up at Daryl in their moisture.

"Beth stop-"

"Ask me how many people." She demanded.

"Beth-"

"Ask me." She yelled louder than she had meant to.

"Beth-"

"Just do it." She said, closing her eyes before she let the emotion drift back to her.

"How many people?" He grumbled out in a rushed recalcitrant voice.

"Twenty four." She answered, her voice as cold as stone.

Daryl sighed, a big number. Larger than he had expected, but it was just more guilt on him. It just proved she had to be tough to survive, she was tough. He knew that, so she had a kill list like everybody else alive anymore. It didn't matter, not to him. He hated himself that Beth Greene had to kill anyone, but that was the world now.

"It was twenty three before…" She nodded to the dried blood drifting from her thumb fingernail.

"Why?" He sighed again, half not wanting to know the answer of a pretty teenage girl left alone in a fucked up world.

Beth bit into the side of her lip and turned to Daryl, putting on a fake heartless glare that she didn't know he saw right through. "Because I _wanted_ to."

"Beth." Daryl whispered the name, getting more used to it every time the monosyllable left his mouth.

"No it wasn't to survive or protect myself, or somebody else." She paused, accidentally letting her words speed up and jumble with emotion seeping into them, but quickly pushing it to the back of mind, before she spoke again. "But because in this world, I and every other asshole still alive, do what we want. 'Cause we can."

"Beth, shut it with this bullshit!" He yelled. "Ya know it's just a shitty act, so stop tryn'a push everyone away. It ain't doin' shit for ya, so just let the people that actually give a damn 'bout ya, give a damn. "

"You don't get it Daryl!" She yelled back, feeling the anger suppress back into her.

"Nah, this is all just some act to hide whatever actually happened to ya." He yelled.

"Fine!" She yelled, feeling tears burn down the side of her cheeks. "Do you want me to tell you that I woke up after being left in a car trunk by _you_. That I was starving and cried myself to sleep every night!" Beth's voice calmed to a sadness. "Is that what you want to hear?" Beth was suddenly very aware that she was still completely naked and needed him, as she continued to yell at him.

"Beth-" Daryl started in a calm voice again.

"No! This is what you wanted, right?" She was yelling in a fury again. "Huh?" Her hands hit against the cooled water she sat in. "Poor little Beth Greene that you left in a fucking trunk!"

"Beth!" Daryl yelled and grabbed her soaked elbow that splashed in the water.

She calmed to a softer, but still just as hateful voice, as her eyes met his, but she didn't feel like a child anymore. "Or do you want to hear that I was looking for you. 'Came all the way to Virginia to find ya." Anger forced her pale face to flush, trying to say something that would hurt him. "Yeah, I got to Virginia, where y'all sat around together, happy and safe, while I was dragged outta my car and-" Her head pounded as she searched for the words that suddenly seemed so far away.

"Beth." Daryl stated calmly, seeing her face fluster in angry tears.

"No!" She yelled, most of the sadness in her being replaced with anger. "You wanted to hear what fucking happened right?" Beth yelled, her mind a blur of confusion and fury. "Little Beth Greene that you abandoned, so I was thrown on the ground in the middle of Winter." She paused, suddenly seeking comfort again. "I screamed and yelled. I shouted your name for you to come. Over and over again, and you know what Daryl?"

Daryl stayed silent, not moving his eyes from the girl, as she yelled the things he knew were true, but refused to believe. Every word from her felt like a knife to his gut, but he knew she was doing it on purpose.

"I was stupid enough to actually think you'd come. That you'd come and save me and bring me away. But you didn't." Her voice shook before she put on her act again for him, the words losing their meaning as they left her mouth. "And those men used me like I was nothin' but some pretty doll that was there, because they wanted me." Beth couldn't stop the tears from rolling down her face, but the feeling behind them seemed to loose meaning. "That's what you wanted to hear right? That people ruined me and I need to be saved by Daryl Dixon!" She yelled. "You want to take care of me now because that's what happened to the little girl, you knew. But here's the thing Daryl." Her voice changed to a spiteful lower tone, with his hand still gripping her arm firmly. "Someone else rescued me, you weren't there. But that's not what happened, it's not my story."

Daryl's grip on her only hardened as a stillness filled her voice, and she didn't try to stop it. "Daryl I killed people because I wanted to, like those men wanted me. 'Cause that's how this world works. So I killed that boy here all those years ago, because I _wanted_ to. 'cause he reminded me of Carl, it hurt me to think about. And now he's dead anyways 'cause of me anyways." Beth couldn't force the tears away as they took over her. The name hurt, she felt it pierce through the walls she had built around herself.

"Beth." Daryl hissed the name out, knowing it was a very different Beth then the one he had once traveled with, laughed with, talked with, been with, been confused by, but it was still Beth Greene and nothing was going to make him leave her, not then, not ever. "Carl got bit the other night, ya didn' do shit to 'im."

"And Glenn?" Beth said through the tears consuming her. "The Asian, who I asked Negan to tell me in detail over and over again about how he ruined everything he was, as his wife screamed, - _my sister_ screamed." Beth's voice was as shriveled as the moisture in her fingers. "I made plans to kill _the widow_ with Negan, the man I was whoring myself out to. I… I-" She was suddenly at a loss for words.

"Ya didn' know." Daryl soothed and pulled her up to stand from the grip on her elbow. He wrapped the towel by his side around her and she leaned against him despite her anger. "I was with Negan. I know the shit he put ya through. The torturin' and the-" He started, but Beth found her words once more.

"You were there?" She reiterated, an internal weakness shining through her voice.

"I know what ya went through, I get it. Ya ain't got nothin' to be ashamed 'bout. It's fucked up what he did to ya."

"No Daryl." She shook her head. "Negan saved me. He was there when you weren't. I was the one who tortured." She whispered.

"Ya _were_." Daryl said, coming up with his words on the spot, as her past destroyed who she was right before his eyes. "Ya ain't anymore." Daryl wrapped his arms around the cotton maroon towel, that he had her wrapped in and held her as tight as he could once again. "Beth, I told ya, I ain't goin' nowhere."

"You should." She whispered against him, as she started to calm down once again in the comfort of his arms.

"I got ya now. Ain't no one ever gonna hurt ya again." He whispered into the golden hairs that his chin rested upon.

"What are you doing Daryl?" She whispered. "Do you even know why you're here?"

"I know what 's like ta not even know why ya do the thin's ya do." He told her, with her weak body still squeezed into his chest. "I'm gonna be 'ere ta I don't have to be. Okay?"

"Okay."

* * *

 **So yeah, I kinda felt like this was a break through point. Things in the next few chapters will be moving quickly, especially with adding Negan back into things and there will be more flashbacks... Please review and let me know what you thought. It'll make me write faster...**

 **Thanks for reading! ;)**


	9. Chapter 9

**Sorry this is super late, but hope you enjoy! Kinda a slow chapter, but please let me know what you think!**

Chapter 9

"Beth would never do that. This is _Bethy_ , we're talking about." Maggie looked around at the stunned silent room after Jesus had finished talking. "She's just a kid."

"She was." Carol managed. "This world made her grow up."

"No, that's shit!" Maggie yelled, every feeling of depression instantly converting to anger at the story Jesus told of her sister. "There's no way she went from being a little girl to a murderer from a couple months on the road. It's impossible."

"She's not stable." Carol spoke again. "Who knows what's going on in her mind…" The old woman said calmly.

"She can heal." Michonne said. "She's gotta get better. She's safe now."

"We'll get her a doctor, see what's even wrong with mind." Rick added.

"And what about now, when she's running out in the middle of the yard swinging a knife and killing whoever she damn well pleases." Rosita said in aggravation.

"She killed a man who was with the Saviors. We don't know why, she's not just fighting anyone." Michonne snapped back.

"She tried to stab you last night Maggie." Rosita turned to the woman, whose fierceness had flooded back into her aggressive eyes.

"She didn't know where she was, she's sick or something. That's not fair." Maggie argued calmly, yet efficiently.

"Exactly." Rosita said. "She's sick or something, but she's putting everyone else at risk.

"Rosita we get that you disagree with Beth being here." Maggie raised her eyebrows in annoyance. "We've heard you loud and clear. But what exactly are you suggesting we do." Maggie stepped towards her, as the others watched silently, feeling the tension start to increase. "To my sister, who just happens to be eight months pregnant, mentally unstable and can hardly walk a few feet by herself."

"She's not your baby sister anywhere."

"It doesn't matter." Michonne. "She's family."

"I'm suggesting you throw her out on her ass and get Gabriel back, someone who actually gave a damn about us and didn't try to stab you." Rosita motioned towards Maggie.

"This discussion is over." Maggie ended. "Negan will be done, dead tomorrow. We're ending this and then Beth's gonna heal. She'll get better, we all will."

"Now we can focus on tomorrow." Carol said shyly from the corner she was standing in.

* * *

Beth stared into the darkness of the room, listening to the hum of the ceiling fan while a strong arm, wrapped around her middle. She took a deep breath, whispering the name _Daryl_ to herself, while his snores filled her ears, in an effort to try and keep the fact clear in her mind, that it was in fact Daryl Dixon holding her in his arms as he slept. She couldn't block out the thoughts of the other men's arms that had once wrapped around her. She remembered lying nude in Negan's arms after their first time together, then in an instant she could almost feel Simon's body pressed against hers. The thoughts made her try to squirm further from Daryl, but she only was able to manage to fall on her back from her side.

Her head rested against the bulge of his bicep, and she looked to see his sleeping face. A warmness filled her body, a feeling she once might of recognized as happiness or at least a sense of safety, but could hardly recognize it, as she was interrupted with a hard kick to her stomach. She moved her hand to her stomach and felt the press against her stitches. Daryl's eyebrows burrowed in some faraway dream, and she pondered if he was happier in that other world or lying in a bed with her, as the first beams of the new day were sneaking through the dark windows.

She sighed and rubbed her stomach in her now cleanly washed T-shirt, that she had worn the day Daryl found her. The baby inside of her continued to kick and she found herself lifting the grey soft material to the end of her breasts to feel the soft skin of her stomach. Her hand formed circles around it until she moved to the line of her scar. It made her frown in the darkness and she felt an internal stinging of her hand as the memory of her first time at Hilltop burned in her mind.

"Daryl." She shut her eyes to block it out, but it persisted more in complete darkness. Her eyes flung open again, and she felt the baby pressing against her bladder. In the heat, chills still shriveled her inside in fear of a memory that felt like a reality. "Daryl." She whispered again and heard her stomach rumble in a subtle hunger.

She tried to remember the last time she had ate and the memories of the previous night rushed back to her. Daryl had told her he would take care of her from now on, the thought was strange, but comforting. Of course, guilt and confusion and a splitting pain in her head followed the words, but for a second it felt good. The feeling of warmth had been burrowed inside of as he pulled her body to his and whispered it.

After of course, he pulled away, but never stayed far from her. She had managed to screw her impression up more before he had managed to fall asleep with her in his arms. Daryl had been the good guy he always was in her dreams, bringing her clothes and helping her dress in the grey T-shirt, and pair of panties without bothering to pull the pair of jeans over, figuring she was just going to lie down again. She emerged from the bathroom moments later to find the bed dressed in new sheets and Daryl patiently waiting for her. His eyes studied her face, but this time she didn't take him not looking at her bare legs as a rejection.

She neared the man and stood centimeters from his face, until she did what she thought would be right in the situation. Or maybe she didn't think, maybe it was an instinct or maybe it was just something so burned in her head that she could never forget it. Either way Beth stood on her tippy toes to try and press her lips to Daryl's. Her eyes stayed open until they touched, but he didn't return the affection. Beth felt Daryl's hands reach her back and pull her back to the floor.

"Don't." He said quietly.

"What?" Beth's eyes were full of bewilderment. She felt empty inside after talking to him; empty, lost, and vulnerable. Her mind seemed to stop whispering what to do, and the voices and pictures left her for a few short minutes. She couldn't help but take relief, yet she didn't know how to act. She just wanted Daryl to tell her what to do, what to say, how to act, like someone else had all those years ago the last time she was empty and lost inside.

"Ya don't have ta anymore." He said, only half understanding what he meant, but thinking Beth's unhinged mind was only causing her to try and kiss him, because it was what she was used to. The thought pained him, but it was better than letting himself fall into the category of her mind where he was just one more man to use her.

Beth's bright eyes just looked more lost when he tried to explain and he just nudged her forward toward the bed. "C'mon." He mumbled and she allowed him to sit her down on the bed in the darkening room. "I'm gonna getcha somethin' ta eat. Stay 'ere." He mumbled and she allowed the softness of the sheets to embrace her.

He left and she sat in the silence, not allowing the thoughts to torture her. She somehow felt colder and more vulnerable sitting without him, and craved his simple touch once more. Her eyes lifted to the fan above her and she watched the simple motion of it with her full attention. It was comforting as her unblackened eye followed one particular wing around and around until the opening of the doer snatched her attention away.

It of course was only a few minutes before he returned with the predictable cup of broth and spoon on a tray, but Beth's eyes ignored the food and darted towards the little girl in his other arm. The blonde hair rubbed the outline of her distinctive green eyes and everything felt numb in Beth's body once again.

"Judith?" Tears returned to her eyes and she couldn't tell if they were happy or sad. She felt the emptiness inside of her fill with some emotion she used to feel in another life. It was different than when she was with Daryl, it felt more familiar, and less wrong for a few moments.

Daryl set the tray down against the bed and dropped his grip around the child to hand her to Beth, who had her arms opened to welcome the toddler in. Beth reached for the girl and Daryl tried to ignore her clinging on to him, in fear Beth would notice the same. The child settled in a second later, leaning against the bump of Beth's stomach with her arms wrapped tightly around her.

"Judith." Beth whispered, taking in the sweet smell of the baby. The simple word being the only thing to come to her mind. The tone of her voice said nothing, but everything at the same time.

"She missed ya." He mumbled, enjoying the excitement of Beth holding the child again. For the quick moment, she might've actually looked like herself. There was no grin on her face, but he could sense the happiness in her eyes. It wasn't a rescued or moving on glimmer of joy, but it only resembled the innocence that had once allowed her to laugh like it wasn't the end of the fucking world.

"She doesn't remember me." Beth corrected, as the girl mumbled some incoherent sounds into her shoulder.

"She will." Daryl said to her. "Ya ain't leavin' 'er again."

Suddenly and without warning with his words, he watched the color and happiness leave Beth's face. Her arms tightened around the child, and Daryl knew something was wrong. Judith felt the bones tense around her, as she let out a squeal. The child was bawling by the time Daryl reached her and pried her from Beth's arms. His fingers pulled her arms from the child's middle, as Judith cried out.

"Beth!" He yelled, but the emptiness had returned to the girl's eyes, by time she turned to him.

"I can't." She whispered. "I just can't." She shook her head aggressively, saying the words more to herself than him. Her gaze was down at her stomach and she trembled once more.

Daryl sighed, as he soothed the child. One step forward, two steps back. He sighed and cupped Beth's face in his hand, keeping the other child situated on his shoulder, calm around him. "'Ay." Daryl snapped at her, as her head continued to shake. "Yer fine."

She stopped moving and lifted her gaze to his, tears and weakness in her eyes. Daryl leaned down and kissed the curls on top of her head. "I'll be right back. Just drink yer soup." He motioned to the red bowl on the tray by the bottom of the bed.

Beth liked that, him telling her what to do. She could take orders, she was good at that. It was easy, just letting her body do what someone else wanted rather than trying to figure out what she was supposed to do. She did as she was told, lifting the red plastic bowl to her lips and sipping the warm broth. A memory of drinking a similar substance burned in her mind, seeing her father vividly sitting by her bedside as a little girl. It aganized her, but the pain felt good. The warm feeling came with it, but unlike with Daryl and Judith it seemed to burn her insides. She liked it, because pain was something to deal with. Pain was something to endure, she knew pain was real. When Daryl returned a few minutes later, he found her calmer than when he left her and the bowl empty in her hands.

"Ya good?" He asked, still having to pry the bowl from her white knuckles that encased it so tightly. She turned to him, but said nothing and explained everything in the lost look of her eyes. "Okay." He mumbled to her.

"Daryl, I know you all look at me like I'm crazy." She started.

"Beth stop."

"No." She shot back, not following his directions. "And I probably am."

"Don't matta', not one bit." He told her. "Yer gonna get better. We'll get ya better."

"Tomorrow you're ending things with Negan?" She asked, seemingly changing subjects.

"Yeah." He mumbled. "He ain't ever gonna be able ta hurt ya ever again."

"I need to go." She told him shortly.

"No fuckin' way." He grumbled.

"I wasn't asking permission."

"Beth-"

"This whole thing is my fault. I planned every attack on you guys." Beth shuttered with her own words. "I need to end it."

"Beth, yer gonna-"

"Get myself killed?" She finished his sentence, and he felt the exact words melt in his mouth with the need gone to say them. "I already have." She said strongly, pushing the hair away from her deformed ear and pressing scar. He studied her, taking in the pinkish dent of the distortion that pained him to think about.

Beth knew she had once been pretty, maybe not pretty, but undamaged. Her skin had once blushed, and she could smile without feeling the skin below the scars wrinkle. She had hardly thought of beauty in the past few years, but in the moment, sitting in front of Daryl, who had his eyes glued to her scar, the thought clung to her thoughts like a wet blanket.

 _Always look. They're a part of you. It just makes you more ruthless, more sexy._ Beth could almost feel the mouth grasp around her neck, like it had the first time the specific man in her mind had said something like that. _Always look Beth. Look!_

"No." Beth whispered under her breath, responding to the internal voice. "I don't want to."

"Beth huh?" Daryl mumbled, suddenly lifting her chin to look at him in confusion.

"Sorry…" Beth apologized, trying to remember what she had been saying. "Right, I don't die."

"Huh?" Daryl grumbled again.

"I live, I kill, I watch everyone else die." Beth said, looking down again. "But I'm just not the dying type."

"Ya ain't losin' no one else." Daryl said, not knowing what else to say and not fully understanding what she meant, like most of the things she had said in the last two days. "And ya ain't killin' no one else either." Beth's big eyes lifted to his again, and he grew in confidence. "Ya ain't gonna need ta anymore. So I'll bring ya tomorrow if ya need ta, but yer gonna listen ta me. Everythin' I say, ya do." He warned harshly.

"Fine." Beth rolled her eyes in a quiet defiance, as she turned from him and pushed her head against a pillow.

Daryl watched the soaked clump of wet hairs clot against the fresh pillow and tried understanding her words. It was useless, and the thought of her going completely nuts came to his mind in a silent pain. He pushed the thought away from him when he sat up at the foot of the bed. His eyes drifted to her face, expecting to find her trying to drift off to sleep, but he was surprised to find the blue ovals forced on him.

Beth let her muscles tense to form a sad excuse for a smile, with no teeth showing, but pressed up lips. She shrugged and pushed herself forward in the bed to grab his hand. Beth felt him tense at her touch, as his back stiffened, but she didn't allow herself to feel the rejection yet. She knew when she would be alone sometime, the feeling or memory would come back to her, but that was for another time.

Daryl allowed her to pull him next to her, following her closely, while ignoring his confused gut feeling. In the last few days, he could barely begin to understand a single action of the girl, but he wanted to follow her nonetheless. He knew she was lost in her world, and the thought of her not coming back to the real world made him feel sick. There were times, the way she hugged her sister or the second of joy that flashed in her eyes when she saw Judith, that he was sure the old Beth was in there somewhere. Hell, he still didn't believe there was a new Beth, he just figured half the stuff she mumbled was just a confused mindset. He wasn't someone to shy away from things that weren't pretty, but he also wasn't someone to sit around and hope for things to get better. But this was Beth, what was he supposed to do.

So he just did what she asked, not with her words, but by the simple looks or motions she gave him. He knew she had no idea what she was doing, that her actions were just attempts at mirroring who she thought she should be or who she once was. He figured she had a better idea of what she needed than he did, and Maggie and everyone else had seemingly disappeared on the girl, so he listened and followed.

Beth pulled his arm around the bulge of stomach, as she lied on the bed in the darkness. She refused to close her eyes until she knew Daryl gave into her and held her against his chest. She knew it was wrong, it felt wrong. This wasn't who she was, she gave up the luxury of being protected and saved when she decided who she was, but she couldn't find the person in her to make her move in the moment.

Eventually the two fell asleep, and so she found herself at dawn lying with Daryl Dixon next to her.

"Beth." Daryl called, after hearing her call his name.

"Huh?" She turned to him, feeling a deep ache in her lower back. The thought that she had called him came back to her in the moment, but she forgot why. She needed something, or had she just said it. Were they talking? Beth felt angry in her confusion.

Daryl traced the outline of her face in the darkness and knew she was once more lost. Beth blinked, trying to recall the previous moments, but knew they were probably lost forever.

"C'mon." He mumbled and threw the sheets encasing them off in one quick motion before extending his hand to Beth.

The ache in her back only worsened when she swung her legs over the side of the bed, to feel her toes tingle at the feel of the old wood floor and was once more reminded she was only in a pair of panties. Beth's eyes moved up to him slowly only to find his usual grim scowl that only left her more confused as she realized her swollen eye had lowered enough to see a slimmer of the room and the man. Her bare legs dangled in the warm still air and she suddenly felt a completely new ache somewhere deep inside of her. It took her a minute to realize what the pain was, or why it picked this particular moment to strike. She couldn't remember feeling it before, but maybe she had... before she got shot in the head. She remembered Zach, and Jimmy and the thoughts of Daryl, but she couldn't remember the feelings. Maybe it was after Negan found her that she forgot what it was like to feel or at least recognize her emotions, or maybe it was before. It didn't matter either way, the fact was every pained withered emotion felt foreign and unnatural to her.

It took her a few seconds of watching his impatient eyes follow the scar across her forehead, as she sat silently complentating through her tangled mind to finally realize what was wrong with her. She wanted him to _look_. It wasn't a pain like the fetus inside of her pressing against her bladder, which the thought of came back to her while she thought it through, nor was it like the ache of her back. No, it was a yearning that burned inside her as if her chest was on fire. And for Beth it fucking stung like nothing she had experienced before.

Beth knew from experience what it was like to have someone want her. She knew what it was like to have a man's eyes stare so deeply into her that for a quick moment, she actually thought that he could see past the seductive concealing face that she covered her imperfections with. Beth knew that she wasn't sexy, nor was she innocently beautiful, like she had been before, although she would never admit it. Nevertheless, her face, her quick enticing movements, her merciless words and actions, seemed to draw more horny men in than a pretty unscarred face ever could. Beth had a game she had to play, a balance she needed to keep equal, so she did what she did.

Before, when Beth used to sit by the window of the third floor biology classroom, she knew what happened during sex. She understood the science of it, and sometimes she heard her friends talk about the pleasures of it. Then she was older, at Grady or near Axel, and she found out about the fear in it.

And then just like that, in one night, her virginity was gone. It was stolen, and all she could do was dig her nails into the dirt and clench her jaw tight enough to feel the back of her teeth ache as they withered down each night with remembrance. And that was it; that was sex. She could feel it, even just sitting next to Daryl with the thought of it. She could feel herself cooling off and her breathes seemed to be harder to catch, but her mind was already lost in thought.

Of course, she had had sex after that. But she had never understood why it was pleasurable. She never got why those men wanted it so badly from her. She had never wanted anybody like those men wanted her.

Until she was sitting on the bed, her eyes glued to none other than Daryl Dixon, the man she had tried to convince herself to hate for two years, as she wrecked the world even more than it was, leaving her even more lost when he finally found her.

"Beth?" His rough scavenged voice was only an echo in her head, as her eyes surveyed him until she felt a few calloused fingers grip the plumpness of her undefined bicep. If it was anyone else, Beth would have been reaching for the knife she kept in her belt and if she would have found it, she would have traced a line across their stomach to create an opening, in what would have seemed like long lasting minutes of naturality to her, but in reality would probably have only took a few tenths of a seconds. Nevertheless, it was Daryl, and something deep inside of her seemed to recognize the feel of the fingers as his and not some lurking intangible demon from inside her self consciousness.

Recognition forced its way back into her one full eye and slivered other one, making the blueness only seem to sparkle more, as if the light caught it at some particular angle. Beth hand reached his in a return of his action, and squeezed the forefinger knuckle that her hand caught naturally in an effort to show him her understanding. In a few actions, it was a language without words.

Daryl forced himself to nod some sort of understanding, but he wasn't entirely sure he was being truthful. Either way, he took her acknowledgement of him as encouragement or at least a mutual statement that she wasn't going to protest him. She felt his opposite palm grip into her shoulder blades in a way that sent chills through her back.

Daryl pushed her back forward and she followed his example, feeling her lower spine twinge in rejection of her weight on it. She winced in the quick pain, squinching the skin around her eyes and nose to a smaller portion in the center of her face, before the pain began to mellow. Her thoughts were instantly distracted by the hope that Daryl didn't notice, but she could never be so lucky.

"What?" The alertness made his voice seem like more of a growl, but the word was clear to Beth.

"Nothin'." She mumbled, suddenly hearing the southern charm of her childhood sweep into her old voice, and she pondered why it returned to her in the moment. Beth had assumed that she had completely rid herself of such a noticeable reminder of who she once was, she even used to practice speaking without the sweetness in the mirror, when she was alone in her bathroom. However, in the moment, the person she had tried to transform herself into seemed to disappear entirely, leaving behind the remainder of the seventeen year southern girl that had once embedded her thoughts so deeply into Daryl, that her decaying words seemed to have become his self consciousness. The childhood innocence that her own sound reminded her of, felt like a dagger in her gut. It was the reminder of her mother and her father, their own accents seemed to flood her mind simultaneously. But for the first time, since she had awoken after the night she had thought she completely lost who she was, she wondered what her father would think of her. It pained her worse than anything else, as the thought of his black eyes that seemed to be focused on her, right before the governor ended his life with a sword that rested on the back of a woman that was now a few flights of stairs away.

The thought was brushed aside quickly, as she muffled her voice to contain herself when she had to respond to Daryl again. His hand rested softly around her, but his gaze seemed anything but comforting to Beth, despite his intentions. She knew he only cared about her, but the depth behind his eyes only seemed to try and decipher her own face and pains, that she knew he could never understand.

"Don't seem like nothin'." He mumbled, looking down in his own sense of awkwardness or maybe a sense of embarrassment, as he flashed his truly bare caring side at her.

Beth knew he was trying the best he could with her. And yet she knew it was an impossible task. She understood that he didn't want her in pain. She knew that he was thinking he could cure her, or make her better in some way. But she knew that it was just bullshit. Maybe, she pondered, it was useless to try and explain it. He would never give up on finding the person she was somewhere in her. But even now, she understood that even if she wasn't fully the person Negan formed, she sure as hell wasn't her father's little girl anymore. She was nobody anymore, but that didn't mean she just got to be someone again. Yet she had to keep going, keep breathing, and just let her instincts act as they wanted to, in order to keep her in this life, at least for another month.

 _One month,_ it felt wrong to Beth. She knew it was medically right, but she couldn't imagine given birth to the baby girl in just a month's time. It made her stomach ache in sickness at the thought for some reason unknown to her.

Beth's mind snapped back into her reality seconds later with just one more nudge of her elbow this time. She felt the indent of his knuckles in a guilty feeling of relief, as she turned to him once more. "I'm good." Her monotone voice came back to her in a response. "Just my back."

"Ye don' hafta come today." He reasoned one last time, knowing full well that it was pointless. After spending as much time with the Greene sisters that he had at the prison and after, he knew they were too damn stubborn for their own good. "Ain't gonna be too safe for ya." His voice was muffled, as he once more resorted to lower his chin and stare at the ground, only to catch sight of Beth's bare toes wiggling in their nakedness.

"I'm going." She said strongly, as her mouth twitched it what almost resembled a sarcastic smile, but stopped before it got too far up her cheeks. "Besides, ain't that much safer here, anyhow without y'all."

Daryl grunted again, knowing she was probably right not to leave her there alone, but hating the idea of dragging her to line of fire. "Maggie sure as hell ain't never gunna go for it." He responded sullenly.

"So?" Beth suddenly felt a childish sense of rebellion building inside of her. "She doesn't get to boss me around, _not anymore_." Her last two words were emphasized in a way that she hadn't meant to, but she knew it was right that they were, as it felt too comforting to be chattering childishly again, forgetting who she was or wasn't.

Daryl grunted, his head still watching the curve of her foot twist in place before she squeezed her toes together.

"Besides, you're gonna go tell her, I'm coming." Beth said persuasively.

"That right?" Daryl played into her act.

"Mhm." She mumbled. "You said I was safe with you, right?" Beth said, a streak of a light meanness in her voice.

"'Course." Daryl said, seeming not to catch her sarcasm.

"Good." She concluded.

"Go get dressed." He commanded, strictly pushing her elbow towards the bathroom. "I'll come get ya, when we're ready."

"Okay." Beth said sullenly, not wanting to be alone, but knowing Daryl was just going to fulfill her wish and get Maggie's okay. Beth's eyes followed Daryl, as he turned from her and left her alone in the room, only to be taunted from the fan swirling above her. She proceeded to the bathroom, the skin of her thighs rubbing against each other as she took the few steps in, feeling her skin sickle with sweat.

Beth returned from the bathroom twenty minutes later with moist curls pulled back in a hair elastic she had found and her skin still sparkling with moisture. To her surprise, Daryl had also returned to the bedroom, this time equipped with a rifle slung around his shoulder and changed into an unsurprising similar outfit than what he had had on hours before. Beth felt his eyes glare at her own clothing, and remembered that she was dressed in his shirt.

She had just found it lying in the corner of the bathroom after she stepped out of the shower, and she figured he wouldn't need it. It was a simple man's blank tank top complete with buttons through the center, that felt baggy and awkward around her shoulders, but she figured it would fit her better than anything else she could find. Whether or not that was true, once she had pulled the rough withered material over her head, she was instantly rewarded with a warm feeling deep inside of her. It smelt like him, and with the distinctive scent, she suddenly felt as if she wasn't completely alone in the tortures that she couldn't tell if they were real or not.

"Sorry, you want it back?" She mumbled, and his eyes averted down her legs to find her in the same jeans she had on when he found her.

"Naw, looks better on ye." He mumbled, but he found himself at a loss of words, as she stood standing in front of him with so many thoughts being conveyed that she didn't mean to show in the deep blueness of her eyes. "Keep it."

She hummed a response before stepping toward the door. "Comin?" She asked clearly and he noticed the underlining of some sort of contentedness in the ringing of her soft voice.

Daryl sighed, when she reminded him of their reality when her hand graced the swell of her stomach and he knew he had to stop pretending that everything was like before. He extended the handgun Rosita had originally collected from her a few days before.

Her eyes reached it milliseconds later and he took note of the level of alertness, as her eyes widened seeing the small gun. She looked up to him again, almost asking permission, before she quickly tried to snatch it from his palm like a child wanting candy, as soon as he nodded his head slightly. With the quick intensity of her movement, Daryl once more pulled the gun back, instantly seeing the confusion sweep through her innocent looking face.

"'ay." He warned clearly to her. "Only if ya hafta."

"Okay." She said, rolling her eyes at his warning and eyeing the gun as it neared her once more. "But I might, you know that, right?"

"Ya won't. Yer gunna be with me." He said, suddenly regretting giving her the gun in the first place.

"I might." She argued.

"I'll keep ya safe." Daryl was growing angrier with her defiance and she knew it, but she couldn't stop herself from trying to dismantle every idea he had concerning her. "I ain't ever gunna let nobody hurt ya again. Beth, not Negan or anybody else."

"No one can keep me safe." Beth turned from him and stepped through the door to depart from the room. "And it ain't just them that have hurt me." She whispered before disappearing out the door, mumbling something about Maggie waiting for them, leaving Daryl nothing else to do, but follow.

It was less than an hour later that Beth found her hair blowing wildly behind her, as the air seemed to rip at her face, riding down an abandoned street clinging to Daryl Dixon for her life on the back of his motorcycle. She hummed slightly to herself, moving her eyes around the unfamiliar scenery with the only signs of life seeming to be the occasional decaying walker trying to move in the direction of the bike.

After some time of just the two of them alone, Daryl found a way into a wooded area, in which he stopped the bike and set it against a tree.

"Maggie doesn't know I'm here?" She asked in more of a statement than a question, as she followed Daryl's lead in standing.

"Yer sista said someth' 'bout ya goin' over 'er dead body." Daryl answered honestly, while moving his attention to the tree line to try and see their group. "I told 'er I'd stay with ya."

Beth nodded quietly to herself for a minute, before continuing their conversation, knowing full well that Daryl wanted to concentrate on bigger things than her. "So we're just gonna sit here and watch?" Beth asked, her voice full of disapproval.

"'Til 's safe fer ya." He answered, still without looking over at her.

"I can handle myself." She said, suddenly feeling once more like a pouting child.

Daryl finally moved his eyes over to the girl, slouching as she leaned against the same tree the bike used to support itself. Her own glance was down at her boots, that seemed to be squeezing her swollen feet too tightly, but she refused to say anything about it. He grunted an acknowledgment of her words, but felt the disapproval building inside him.

A quick second of fear washed over him, although he would never let it show, with the thought of Beth trying to handle herself. After everything he had been told, and from what he had concurred, Daryl came to the conclusion that there was a period of time, in which Beth Greene could take care of herself better than anyone else. It was probably in that period that she truly lost who she was, but people can come back, Daryl was sure of it. It may have been the only thing he was ever hopeful about in his life, he was going to damn well get Beth Greene back to who she wanted to be. So now, she couldn't _handle herself_ the way she was so adamant about, but she wasn't the child that needed to be taken care of that everyone thought she was. In Daryl's eyes, Beth was just a little lost and needed some finding. He would do right by her, he knew that, as much as was possible for him to do. And in the end, it would be worth it, to see the Beth that smiled and sang with her sweet voice of hope.

He could never allow himself to believe that that girl was gone forever…

Suddenly his entire thought process was interrupted by a whistle. It was as clear as anything, ringing through the trees, and the two standing in the midst of it, knew exactly what it meant. Daryl grabbed his gun from around his arm and pressed his eye against the scope.

"Shit." Daryl mumbled and swung the gun around his arm again.

"What?" Beth asked, noting the concerned sound of her own voice in confusion.

"They got 'em surrounded." Daryl answered, looking Beth in her sparkling eyes and knowing what he had to do. "Beth I gotta go."

"Wait Daryl, you can't just leave me here." Her voice shook in her franticness. Tears swarmed her eyes, and a voice deep inside of her scolded her for being so weak and pathetic. She had been on her own, she knew how to kill. That same part of her told her that she wasn't any safer with Daryl than alone. Yet tears swarmed her eyes without knowing why except that she didn't want Daryl to leave her… again.

"Greene, yer gunna be fine." Daryl's sincerity was clear to her, as he grabbed her gun from her belt and pressed it firmly in her palm. She gulped, as she looked from the gun to his eyes and nodded. " _Not unless ya hafta_." He repeated what he said earlier before letting go of his grip on the gun for Beth to be its sole supporter.

"Don't get yourself killed." Beth said quietly, still clearly distraught about his decision.

Daryl's lip quivered in his attempt at what anyone else would have smirked at. The curve of his lips returned to its normal low standing a second later, as he turned from her, feeling his chest wretch in guilt, wanting nothing more than to grab her and ride far away from any of this on the bike that lay only a few feet away, but he forced himself to walk the first few steps from her.

"Wait Daryl." The girl called and he stopped in his spot. "If it comes to it, he'll keep you alive long enough to find me, if you tell him I'm not at Hilltop anymore."

"It won't." Daryl answered, trying to hide his anger at her pessimism.

"It might." She corrected, the coldness flooding back into her voice that he thought she had gotten rid of, only for it to return in her sternness. "I won't let him kill you."

"I ain't lettin' ya go back there." Daryl answered and turned to her, feeling himself become angrier every lingering second.

"I ain't letting ya die for me." She corrected his statement. "Go now, do what you gotta do." She said, suddenly timid again.

Daryl grunted, not wanting her to think they had reached a conclusion to their argument, but knowing he had to go. He turned and walked away, leaving the girl completely alone.

Beth's back began to ache moments later, as her eyes continued to study the scene she could see through the trees. Negan was talking through a megaphone, his voice erupting in her own mind, bringing painful memories back to her mind.

Beth placed her hand on the small of her back and proceeded to sit on the bike to nullify the pain. It proved half successful, as she sighed and closed her eyes with her head leaning against the tree behind it.

"Greene?" A voice pulled Beth out of her trance and she swung her head up too quickly, instantly feeling the pounding. Her eyes seemed to sting, as she saw a woman she recognized as one of Negan's lieutenants and two men, who she might have seen around sanctuary.

 _Shit!_ She thought silently to herself while gripping her hand gun tighter in her palm. She thought of firing on them, or at least trying to fight, but Daryl's words ran through her mind. _Not unless ya hafta_. Beth contemplated this while the woman was saying something to her.

"Well, shit. Half of us thought you were dead without seeing you in months." The woman continued, as Beth began to listen. "Guess that's why Negan kept you locked away all this time." She smirked cruelly and nodded to Beth's middle.

"Guess so." Beth answered, pulling over her vulnerabilities that she had left bare minutes earlier with a face of nothing, but coldness for the three Saviors.

"Makes sense." The woman continued. "Why he cared so much about finding you."

"It's Laura, right?" Beth asked.

The woman rolled her eyes and looked to her two subordinates. "Course Mrs. Negan wouldn't bother learning names." She said to them and smirked.

"It's Greene." Beth suddenly pulled her gun to face Laura in anger. The motions didn't feel real to her, like it wasn't even her making them. It just felt like she wasn't really there at all, that her aggressiveness was just a reflex at that point once again.

Laura smirked once more, although Beth could see the true fear through her denial and the act she put on for them. "So what, you're gonna shoot me now?"

Beth stayed quiet, thinking about her options.

"Guess Negan wouldn't even be mad, if you killed me, you know?" She continued.

Beth stayed quiet once more, remembering Daryl's words to her. She didn't have to, she wanted to. Beth was about to lower the gun, fully enjoying watching the woman sweat through her confidence, when one of the men to Laura's left knocked the gun to the dirt.

Beth watched it fall, but made no attempt to reach for it. She pushed her arm back to her side and looked once more at Laura, who just scoffed at her.

"C'mon." The woman said walking a few steps towards the tree line. "Let's get you back to Negan."

Beth sighed and stayed still for a few more seconds before Laura spoke again.

"Greene?" She asked, curious as to why Beth had not started walking.

Beth ignored her, but finally forced herself to step forward into the dirt. I don't have to, Beth thought to herself, wondering if Daryl would want her to escape or keep her hands clean. Either way, Beth knew she wasn't dying that day, so she took another step toward Negan and two separate ideas of a home.


	10. Chapter 10

**Hi guys! So I know it's been a really really long time since I updated, as I kinda abandoned this story. If anyone still follows it, I hope you enjoy this chapter. Sorry for giving up over the last few months. but I hope to go back to writing from now on.**

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"Hey Negan!" Laura interrupted Negan's speech on the megaphone in the loudest voice she could produce. His eyebrows raised and she could she the annoyance in his face as he turned to her, before he realized the reasoning behind her interruption.

The girl's glare was like ice to him as she refused to break the look of disgust on her face. Her lip folded as she nibbled on the side of it, a trait he knew on her meant she was thinking carefully, lost in thought about the two worlds of what she should do and what she would do.

Negan immediately jumped off the back of the car he was standing on. The moment of shock passed, and he walked as quickly as he could while keeping his stamina to the girl, who was standing there coldly with her hand pressed firmly against the bump. Her eyes seemed to tighten their hold on him with their indecisiveness, taking in every movement, breath and word from him, as if one tiny action would snap her entirely.

"Greene?" He asked as she glared at him before he grabbed her arm tightly.

She refused to let any words depart from her mouth, knowing a cold look would hurt Negan worse that what she could say. She felt every finger of him prickle into her skin, feeling like poison sticking to her. His fingernails were indenting the plush skin of her forearm, stinging it slightly as he only squeezed her tighter, but she could hardly feel the accompanying pain in comparison to the ache she felt in her chest, begging her to run.

"The baby?" He whispered quietly enough so only she could hear. The soldiers around them just stood, some pretending not to watch, but eavesdropping noticeably, others just glued to the army in front of them. "Is the baby alright? Are you alright?"

"The baby's healthy." She said in a monotone voice, refusing to let any emotion through. Baby, she didn't like the feel of the word in her mouth. She remembered a time when the thing growing inside of her wasn't the first thing everyone thought or asked about when they saw her. She remembered when every man used to respect her, and if they didn't, she'd settle to have their fear of her and Negan motivate their behaviors.

"Okay." Negan thought for a second, his eyes still searching hers for any sign of warmth. "We're gonna get you home. I'll have Carson take care of you."

"I'm staying for this." She said strictly, knowing Negan still thought that she was forcefully kidnapped and wanted nothing more than to be in her bed next to him. The thought filled her with disgust as she continued to stare grimly at him.

Negan smirked his usually charismatic grin, and looked at her almost proudly.

His perfect minion wanted the fight, she wanted revenge as much as he did. Sometimes he wondered if she went too far, if she had just lost her mind, and didn't care why she was killing or who it was, but in the moment, those thoughts were long lost. In the moment, she was the perfect soldier, wanting blood like it was the air she breathed.

"Laura." He called, not breaking his stare at Beth. "Bring the bow.

It was only seconds later that the blonde woman with the tattoo returned with a smooth wooden bow complete with a case of three arrows. Negan grabbed it from her, his hand grazing the part the arrow normally rested on as Beth's eyes studied it. Beth watched his hand move along the wood, touching every inch before he would give it to her, as if taking ownership of her once prized possession.

"Bet you've missed her." He continued before turning it sideways to face the girl. Their eyes refused to meet, both of the, fixed on the fixed contraption. Her mind seemed blank, and suddenly there was no more Negan or Rick, just her and her bow that together already had too much blood. It was a weapon, but more than that, it was a choice.

She hadn't been a defenseless child in a while, long before Negan, but now she had a weapon. Even before the simple wood was in her grasp, she could find ways to defend herself. She knew how to fight better than most men twice her size, she had been trained to use it against them. But this, this was a different kind of power; it was a choice. She could just so easily end everything, it wouldn't take her more than a few seconds. It was so familiar to her muscles, the movements of just grasping the arrow, stringing it, and pulling without a thought. She used to focus when she pulled the string back, she used to mean it, but now, now it was just a string.

"Like nothing else." Beth finally spoke, moving her eyes from her only power left in the world to the man who was giving it to her. Her voice was suddenly once more that of Negan's perfect minion, warm to him but somehow chilling to everyone else.

He laughed as her hand fell against the cold wood and she grabbed the back holder to swing it around her shoulder. She tried to think about what she was doing, she tried to figure out why she was doing it, but nothing came to mind. Her body took over, holding the bow, and breathing, like she had no mind to protest it. Her eyes turned back to the other group, studying them, trying to find a way to remember in the scared faces of the surrounded group.

She pulled the string back and tilted the bow tightly, feeling a slight breeze move her messy ponytail as she aimed the nonexistent arrow at her group. Her eyes studied the combined force until they fell upon her sister. My sister, she repeated silently to herself, moving her lips to form words that no sound followed, although it looked more like a shiver to anyone watching her, as she tried to make herself feel the words, but her body felt numb. They were less than a hundred feet away, and yet Beth had never felt so far apart, like she was in her own world entirely.

Beth couldn't hear what her sister was yelling, but she saw her turn to Rick and saw the anger and fear in her face. Beth wondered if she thought that she was betraying them, or if she just thought she had been captured. It didn't really matter one way or another. The fact was she was standing on the wrong side, fully knowing she could end the whole thing with one swift movement. Her body felt frozen to her, forgetting what it was to feel Negan's hands on her, forgetting what it was to be hugged by Maggie.

Her arm shook before she forced it down when Negan turned his attention back to the proceeding battle. Beth stood by the car, hundreds of people around them, awaiting life or death, and she felt nothing. Her eyes moved along the faces beside her, Negan's men, waiting for his order to take other lives, as were Rick's people. She tried to make herself feel sad or feel anything, but all she could concentrate on was the sound of her own breathes.

"Rick the Prick" His voice echoed through the megaphone. "You really shitted this one up, didn't you?"

Beth studied the bewildered glare of Rick's eyebrows furrowed together in a fury. The indents of his smolder only emphasizing the anger at being outsmarted once more by Negan. He was far away, but she could have recited every wrinkle of his face, seeing him or not. Negan's voice was booming throughout the open field, but she hardly heard it.

And then she found him, walking up to the front line. She couldn't see his face, but knew it would be a mixture of anger, waiting for someone or something to fight. And then she felt it. She felt the need to go back to him, she felt the hurt of the thought of him dying, she felt the loss of standing next to Negan, when he was there. She suddenly cared if she died, she cared if Negan took her, or killed her sister or anyone else, but she wanted to be with Daryl. She wanted to feel his arms around her, she craved the feel of his chest against hers, she wanted him.

"Greene?" Negan turned to the girl and nodded towards the bow in her arm. She obeyed his unspoken command and pinned an arrow between the arch and string. Tilting it to meet the direct line of between where Daryl and Maggie stood with their guns held high in anticipation, Beth breathed out a gush of air she didn't realize she was holding in. Her nose twitched at the mumbles from men behind, she could tell Negan was saying something to her, but nothing seemed to exist except the end of a bow and the inches between two alive bodies.

She exhaled once more, feeling the extreme tension of holding the bow force a new ache in her shoulders and back. The end of the contraption scraped the outer layers of her bump, and a wave of guilt went through her when she felt an alien kick inside of her.

"Greene" Negan's voice half broke her concentration, but she refused to let it show as she released the tension and forced herself to tear her eyes from the piercing bow flying towards the people she had once loved. Negan didn't follow her lead as his eyes landed on the bow standing horizontally with its end having stabbed the peeling bark of an old tree. He studied the look of shock on Maggie's face, as she slowly realized what happened, and who exactly had shot the arrow. Daryl's expression stayed almost entirely the same, as his eyes stayed focus on Negan now, rather than the heavily pregnant blonde girl, looking entirely out of place.

"Shit Greene." He turned to the girl, who had started glancing over the overwhelming force of the Saviors, seconds away from decimating the opposing group. She bit into her lower lip, wondering how easy it would be to release one more arrow straight through Negan's eye. So easy, yet she knew she could never truly do it, she wasn't even sure if she wanted to. Nevertheless Daryl had told her not to kill, and for once she wanted nothing more than to listen, but knew she wasn't going to. Daryl might be dead in a few seconds if she didn't do something, yet she and her baby would be dead quicker if she did. "I've never seen you miss like that before." Negan said, and a subtle fear pinned Beth's bones.

"I ain't never shot this pregnant before." She lied, hoping it would rid Negan of the thoughts she knew would come to him.

Her head pounded and the iron taste of blood filled her mouth, as she realized she might have bit a little too hard into her lip. She moved her eyes to where Dwight stood in captivity, and he looked back at her. She didn't know what he did to deserve his sentence, but she could almost have felt bad for him. There was always something about him, that made her hate him a lot less than the rest of the men. Now he was most likely a dead man, no matter how the battle went. The thought sent a vile taste through her and for a split second, she thought she might actually vomit again. That thought was quickly brushed aside, when she looked to see Negan had his gun up.

"Now!" He yelled.

She heard the shot from Negan's gun so close to her, but after her hearing just turned to a high pitch ringing. She instantly felt weak, as she watched each gun implode before she turned to Negan. Her eyes found the gun dropped to the floor until they moved up to the wound on his hand.

He was yelling, she could see it in the movement of his jaw snapping open and closed again, but no sounds could register. It felt like only seconds of her world blurring around her in confusion, before Rick's group was approaching. She could feel fingers press against her, trying to tug her back to reality, but she wasn't mentally with them.

Her eyes focused on the angel winged jean jacket that she saw facing her with the man's side turned when he sent a bullet through some Savior she probably wouldn't have known. Negan was tugging at her arm to get down, but Rick had already caught sight of him. He ran, leaving her standing there, hoping one of the Saviors wouldn't finally send another bullet through her skull.

Beth watched Rick run after Negan from the opposite side of his truck. She slid her back against the cool metal, and slowly shut her eyes for a quick second. It was only seconds later that a new interruption came about. Her eyes were once more forced open, only to find that Dwight's tied up hands were nudging her elbow.

"Dwight." She heavily breathed the name, as her eyes studied the man.

"You should go, Greene." He said, half in a whisper, realizing he was just as unsafe as Greene was in the situation. "Get in the car and find Sherry. You can track, you'll find her."

"I can't Dwight." Beth whispered, hearing an imposing gun shot.

"Go. You'll get that baby killed, Negan's done now." He told her, all emotion leaving his voice. "You'd be able to find her, give her the baby, just like you planned."

"I ain't goin' anywhere." She said, quietly relating Daryl's words to her, and finding a strength she had thought she lost in them.

"Greene, Greene!" Dwight yelled as she stood and barely heard him.

Beth stepped slowly from him, going openly into the surrendering battle. She knew Daryl or Maggie would see her almost instantly, but her feet moved on instinct. Not unless ya hafta. Daryl's voice was embedded deep within her as she stepped further down the grass hill until she caught sight of Negan and Rick.

The two were both bloodied, Negan swinging a bat in a teasing manner, but Beth could see from there Rick was trying to reason.

"Bethy!" A woman shrieked from behind and she knew it could be one person.

Michonne grabbed Maggie back as Beth exhaled twice more before lifting her bow.

"Beth." This voice was different than the woman's shriek. She would have recognized the deep southern tone of it from anywhere, but in the moment she couldn't let it deep into her mind.

Beth pulled her second to last arrow from the hitch and her eyes narrowed in on its point as she set it. The end had two green and one purple filt wings on it, and she knew there had been times that she wondered what made the creator pick those colors. It wasn't that she didn't like them, it just seemed odd to her that someone would take the time to specify the green and purple. Maybe it had been his kid's favorite colors or something, she thought to herself, knowing there was fifty million other things for her to be thinking about as the wind seemed to go silent in anticipation, yet she couldn't force the thought from her mind. The thought was hilariously ironic to her, and at any other time, she might have even laughed out loud at it, but she knew she couldn't then. Still, the thought that she was holding up a deadly object between her index finger and her middle finger, having the full capability of ending any of the hundreds of people in front of, was designed by a child's favorite crayon color, made her chest warm in internal laughter.

"Beth." It was the same voice, but she could tell it was getting closer. The first time her name boomed in her ears, she could tell the man, who said it, was at least twenty feet away. Now, it seemed like he was less than ten.

Beth forced the thought away as she created more tension, feeling the tightly weld rope sting at the ends of her fingers. Her eyes narrowed in on the line from the strict point of the arrow to Negan's smirking face, with Rick standing directly adjacent to him. Neither of them seemed to notice her yet, but she could tell there was a plethora of people watching her and them from behind.

"Beth." The name sounded a third and final time, before she felt calloused fingers breeze against her elbow. "Ya don't hafta." He whispered next to her.

The words stung and she closed her eyes to dull the pain inside of her. She could feel the grip closing in on her, readying himself for her to give in and lower the weapon.

"I don't." She whispered and inhaled one final time with her eyes shut. With the build up of her exhale, she released the tension and opened her eyes just in time to see the purple and green wings take flight and drift through the air, as the warm carbon dioxide she had just exhaled warmed the skin under her nostrils.

She didn't turn to Daryl, as she felt his grip drop. Her eyes were fixed on Negan as he stammered against the tree with a shot through the curve of his thigh.

She watched his eyes contract in pain, but only took a few steps forward, ignoring every sound and movement in the world except Negan's hand grazing the bloodied area, and Rick's shocked grunt. She only went closer to hear his words to her, with her eyes slightly turned to see Rick grab Lucille off the grass it had fallen to.

"Gre-ene" Negan stuttered through the pain.

Rick was standing above him, a shard of glass ripping the skin of his hand open in preparation. Daryl was not even five steps behind Beth, as he approached the scene. The others stood, slowly coming forward as they watched the scene in a justified horror.

Beth pulled the final arrow from her once full collection and concentrated on pinning it between the bow and string.

"Shit, those fucking hurt." He said, smirking his usual charismatic grin in his pain.

Beth lifted her bow to arch at her bump once more, but her eyes stayed on Negan besides the colorful wings this time.

"So." Negan was interrupted by a fit of coughing, before returning to his glare at Beth's ice cold expression. Daryl studied her just as much, watched the strictness of her face. Not a single muscle contracted to show any signs of weakness at all, and her lips half puckered as she held all the power in the world at the moment, holding an arrow facing towards Negan's eye. "You've got to be shitting me, Greene." He mumbled.

"Don't Beth." Daryl's voice was as stricter than she had ever heard it. "It don't gotta be ya. Ya don't hafta kill 'im."

Beth took a deep breath, trying to make a decision.

"Greene, put the bow down. Stop shitting around. You're not going to shoot it." Negan spoke clammy, even with a hint of laughter in his voice.

"Beth, don't listen to 'im. He ain't worth shit." Daryl reasoned, while Rick watched the scene, deep in thought.

Beth tuned them out through her next inhale, and only listened to one specific voice in her head. We all got jobs to do. The sweet battered old voice made her insides swell and it felt good. She didn't recognize the voice at first, but it brought upon something close to happiness in her.

She shot her eyes opened and let go of the arrow, letting it hit centimeters from Negan's head, causing bark to fall from the old pine tree. Her eyes fell to Negan, only to find that he was bleeding out even without her arrow. She turned to see Siddiq running towards him, and once more looked to Rick.

Suddenly the pieces of the puzzle came to her, as she realized Rick had slashed him, but was keeping him alive. The screams of her sister boomed in her ears, as she watched Maggie collapse in Michonne's arms. She suddenly felt the million eyes on her, but Daryl filled her thoughts once more, when she felt his breath on the back of her neck.

"I never miss." She said strongly, no longer feeling like her world was closed off to just them, but still feeling a sense of protection with his eyes on her. She could tell he was confused, that he was thinking real hard on her actions. For a second, she was scared he'd leave her there, not want to take her back to Hilltop, or Alexandria or wherever the hell else. The thought sent a shudder through her as she thought back to Dwight's words, and wondered how true they could possible be.

"Ya just did." He said, his voice still cold and unaccepting.

"No I didn't." She shook her head in a childish manner, hearing the steps of Rick ruffle the leaves beneath him, and instantly knowing he was approaching them. "I meant to hit him where I did." She said, his eyes still tearing into her. "I wanted to.. maybe." She whispered, a questioning in herself pegging at her chest. "But I didn't. I didn't have to." She said, her lip quivering in hope he'd believe her.

"That right?" He asked.

"Mhm." She said, suddenly feeling like a little kid again being scolded.

"Beth." Rick suddenly caught up with the two, interrupting Daryl's thoughts completely. She turned to him, her eyes filled with a look of innocence, as she studied his blood stained shirt and hands.

"Rick." She said shyly, hearing the serious tone of his voice, and suddenly wondering what grave matter he could want her for. Thoughts flooded her mind of him telling her to leave with the Saviors, who she knew would just kill her or worse for everything she did. It wasn't that she thought she didn't deserve it, but she wanted her baby alive and safe by time she had to pay her dues. Even then, she knew she wouldn't have the long painful death that they had imagined for her.

"I just wanted to-"

Beth's concentration was consumed with the red glare of his eyes, and she pondered the deep sadness of them. It sent a pain in her gut that soon translated to the ache of her back, so she moved her hand to sooth the small of her back in an effort to reduce the pain. "Wait." She interrupted, hearing his tone lower with every word, and fully believing he was about to deliver some truth that he was bursting to get out.

She fully understood it, and knew that deep inside of her, she wasn't angry at him for wanting her gone. Hell, she half wanted to be gone. He had Judith to think of, and she couldn't exactly be considered family anymore. The burn of the thought seemed to at least be pushed off as she stared into his sad eyes, and knew how much pain she had actually caused him.

"Daryl." Her voice was quiet with a sense of sadness in it, but still stern and strict when she turned to the one man, she almost fully believed would never agree with her just taking off. "Give us a minute." She said, ignoring the questioning glare he gave her with the dark eyes she knew could either rip her apart or patch her together.

She could feel his resistance building in him, and the tension was about to break with the opening of his mouth, when Rick interrupted with a nod towards his friend. "She'll be okay with me." He said confidently, and Beth half felt like saying she didn't need someone to be safe with, although she knew that probably wasn't true anymore.

Daryl finally nodded and turned towards Michonne and a collapsed Maggie. Beth waited to she felt his departure had left him a few feet out of hearing distance before speaking again to Rick. "Look I get it." She said, her voice as cold as when she spoke to Negan.

"You do?" He questioned, amused with her confidence.

"You don't want me around. I wouldn't want me around, but the baby…" Her voice trailed off in a thought. "Can I stay until I have it? Then I'll leave, I promise. Just take care of her, please?" She looked up to him, and tried to decipher his confused grim expression.

"Beth-" She could her the resistance in his voice.

"I'll leave and never come back, but please just keep her." She begged, feeling a sadness deep into her voice again as she became frantic with the idea of rejection. "We don't hafta tell Maggie or Daryl, I'll just leave. I promise." Tears began to roll down her face, fully believing he was about to tell her not to come back with them.

"Beth." Rick finally spoke, shocked at Beth's words. He pondered in the seconds that the wind filled their ears, how the girl could be so confused or just screwed up. She was a second daughter to him, she wasn't leaving any of them again. He knew that, he just didn't understand how she could actually think he'd be willing to send her out on her ass, even after everything she did.

"You're not going anywhere." He said, half smiling when she looked up to him in shock, her tears drying and her eyes full of hope again even just for a split second. Rick looked at the little girl, and wished her father was still there. He had said she was like his daughter, yet he had no idea what to do with her.

"I was just gonna say, I wish Carl could've been here to see you." Tears glistened in the older man's eyes, and Beth felt pain deep inside her at the mention of his name.

"It's my fault he's dead." She whispered, not allowing herself to receive the love he was trying to give her.

"No Beth." Rick answered. "It's not anybody's fault. You can't blame yourself for everything."

"And Glenn and everyone else?" The young girl questioned.

Rick sighed. "Well, sometimes we just need to find a way to live with some things."

"And if we can't?" She questioned, as she felt his arm wrap sound her shoulder and push her foreword.

"We hafta." Rick answered. "Now, we gotta go build the world Carl wanted. And Beth?"

"Mhm." She hummed a response, allowing him to continue.

"Carl sure as hell would've wanted you in it."


End file.
